Pushed and the Return Push | Page 4

growing fields--the
curious output of myriads of spinning-spiders. There were quaintly
restful visits to the front line. The Boche was a mile away at least; and
when you were weary of staring through binoculars, trying to spot
enemy movement, you could sit and lounge, and hum the rag-time
"Wait and See the Ducks go by," with a new and very thorough
meaning. The signal officer was away doing a course, and I took on his
duties: plenty of long walks and a good deal of labelling to do, but the
task was not onerous. "We've only had one wire down through
shell-fire since we've been here," the signalling officer of the outgoing
brigade had told me: and indeed, until March 21, the telephone-wires to
batteries and "O.P.'s" remained as undisturbed as if they had skirted
Devonshire fields and lanes. The colonel was quite happy, spending
two or three hours a day at O.P.'s, watching our guns register, or do a
bit of sniping on the very very rare occasions when a Hun was spotted.
"I can see how the subalterns shoot on a big open front like this--and
teach them something," he said. "This is an admirable part of the line
for instruction purposes."
Whether the Boche would attack in force on our part of the front was
argued upon and considered from every point of view. There were
certain natural features that made such an attempt exceedingly
improbable. Nevertheless infantry and artillery kept hard at it,
strengthening our means of defence. One day I did a tour with the
machine-gun commander in order to know the exact whereabouts of the
machine-gun posts. They were superlatively well hidden, and the
major-general himself had to laugh when one battalion commander,
saying, "There's one just about here, sir," was startled by a corporal's
voice near his very boot-toes calling out, "Yes, sir, it's here, sir."

Gunners had the rare experience of circling their battery positions with
barbed wire, and siting machine-guns for hand-to-hand protection of
the 18 pdrs. and 4·5 hows.; and special instruction in musketry and
Lewis-gun manipulation was given by infantry instructors. There was
memorable jubilation one morning at our Brigade Headquarters, when
one of the orderlies, a Manchester man who fired with his left hand,
and held the rifle-butt to his left shoulder, beat the infantry crack shot
who came to instruct the H.Q. staff.
Camouflaging is now, of course, a studied science, and our colonel,
who issued special guiding notes to his batteries, had a few sharp words
to say one afternoon. The British soldier, old and new, is always happy
when he is demolishing something; and a sergeant sent to prepare a pit
for a forward gun had collected wood and corrugated iron for it by
pulling to pieces a near-by dummy gun, placed specially to draw enemy
fire. "Bad as some Pioneers I noticed yesterday," said the colonel
tersely. "They shifted a couple of trees to a place where there had been
no trees before and thought that that was camouflage."
Happy confident days! The doctor, noting the almost summery heat
that had set in, talked of the mosquito headquarters that would develop
in the pond near our quarry. "I'll oil that pond," he gave forth, and
prepared accordingly. Each mail brought him additional copies of the
'Saturday Evening Post,' which he devoured every moment he was off
duty.
I made the joyful discovery that the thick stone blocks kept the mess so
dry and at such an even temperature that the hundred decent-quality
cigars I had brought from England could be kept in condition as perfect
as if they were at the Stores. The adjutant learnt that his new steed
could indeed buck; but as the afternoon which saw him take a toss
preceded the day on which he left for leave to England, he forgot to be
furious, and went off promising to bring back all sorts of things for the
mess.
Our companion infantry battalion were as gorgeously housed as
ourselves in an adjoining quarry, and at the dinner parties arranged
between their mess and ours reminiscences of Thiepval and Schwaben

Redoubt, and July 1st, 1916, and St Pierre Divion and the Hindenburg
Line, brought out many a new and many an old story.
On the night of March 19th our chief guest was the youthful
lieutenant-colonel who a very few weeks before had succeeded to the
command of the ----. Tall, properly handsome, with his crisp curling
hair and his chin that was firm but not markedly so; eyes that were
reflective rather than compelling; earnest to the point of an absorbed
seriousness--we did right to note him well. He was destined to win
great glory in the vortex of flame and smoke and agony and panic into
which we were to be swept