Pushed and the Return Push | Page 5

within the next thirty-six hours. My chief
recollection of him that night was of his careful attentiveness to
everything said by our own colonel on the science of present-day
war--the understanding deference paid by a splendid young leader to
the knowledge and grasp and fine character of a very complete gunner.

II. "THE BOCHE IS THROUGH!"
At 5.10 P.M. on March 20 I was in the mess, casting an appraising eye
upon the coloured study of a girl in pink--dark-haired, hazel-eyed, très
soignée, but not too sophisticated, one would say; her beauty of the
kind that glows and tells of abundant vitality and a fresh happy mind.
The little American doctor had sacrificed the cover of one of his
beloved 'Saturday Evening Posts' for this portrait, and with extreme
neatness had scissored it out and fastened it on the wall--a pleasant
change from the cocaine and chocolate-box suggestiveness of the
languorous Kirchner type that in 1916 and 1917 lent a pinchbeck
Montmartre atmosphere to so many English messes in France and
Flanders.
The day had been hot and peaceful, the only sound of gun-fire a
six-inch how. registering, and, during a morning tour with the second
lieutenant who had come from one of the batteries to act as temporary
signalling officer, I remembered noting again a weather-beaten civilian
boot and a decayed bowler hat that for weeks had lain neglected and
undisturbed in one of the rough tracks leading to the front line--typical

of the unchanging restfulness of this part of the front.
Suddenly the door opened, to admit Colonel ----, C.O. of the Infantry
Battalion who were our near neighbours in the quarry.
"Have you had the 'PREPARE FOR ATTACK'?" he asked abruptly as
we held ourselves to attention.
"No, sir," I replied, and moved to the telephone to ring up Divisional
Artillery Headquarters.
"Just come in," he said; and even as I asked exchange to put me
through to "D.A.," the brigade clerk came in with the telephoned
warning that we had talked about, expected, or refused to believe in
ever since the alarm order to move into the line a fortnight before.
The formal intimation was sent by wire to the batteries, and I
telephoned to find which battery the colonel was visiting and gave him
the news, which, according to our precise and well-thought-out scheme
of defence, was a preliminary warning not intended to interfere with
any work in hand.
Then the doctor and myself and the Divisional Artillery gas officer,
who had called in while on an inspecting tour, settled down to tea, jam,
and water-cress.
That night our dinner guest was the former captain of our 4·5 how.
battery, now in command of a heavy battery that had come into action
within a quarter of a mile of our H.Q. The "MAN BATTLE
POSITIONS," the order succeeding "PREPARE FOR ATTACK" in the
defence programme, was not expected that night, and we gossiped and
talked war and new gunnery devices much as usual. No story goes so
well at mess as the account of some fatuous muddle brought about by
the administrative bewilderments that are apparently inevitable in the
monster armies of to-day. This was one told with quiet relish by our
guest that night:--
"You remember the ---- show?" he said. "A lot of stores were, of course,

lost in the scramble; and, soon after I joined my present battery, I had
to sit on an inquiry into the mysterious loss of six waggons belonging
to a 60-pounder battery. Two courts of inquiry had already sat on the
matter, and failed to trace the whereabouts of the waggons, which had
been reported in all sorts of places. At the third inquiry a witness stated
that the last place the waggons were seen at before getting lost was
such and such a place. A member of the court asked casually whether
any one had since visited the spot; and as it was near lunch-time some
one else suggested that the court adjourn while an officer motor-cycled
over and made inquiries. And I'm hanged," concluded the teller of the
story, "if the officer didn't come back and report that the waggons were
still there, had been there all the time, and were in good condition and
under a guard. Piles of official correspondence had been written over
the matter, and the investigation had drifted through all sorts of
channels."
Midnight: I had sent out the night-firing orders to our four batteries,
checked watches over the telephone, and put in a twenty minutes'
wrestle with the brain-racking Army Form B. 213. The doctor and
signalling officer had slipped away to bed, and the colonel was writing
his nightly letter home. I smoked a final cigarette and turned in at 12.30
A.M.
3.30 A.M.: The telephone bell above my