Pushed and the Return Push | Page 6

head was tinkling. It was the
brigade-major's voice that spoke. "Will you put your batteries on some
extra bursts of fire between 3.45 and 4.10--at places where the enemy,
if they are going to attack, are likely to be forming up? Right!--that
gives you a quarter of an hour to arrange with the batteries.
Good-night!"
My marked map with registered targets for the various batteries was by
the bedside, and I was able, without getting up, to carry out the
brigade-major's instructions. One battery was slow in answering, and as
time began to press I complained with some force, when the
captain--his battery commander was away on a course--at last got on
the telephone. Poor Dawson. He was very apologetic. I never spoke to
him again. He was a dead man within nine hours.

I suppose I had been asleep again about twenty minutes when a rolling
boom, the scream of approaching shells, and regular cracking bursts to
right and left woke me up. Now and again one heard the swish and the
"plop" of gas-shells. A hostile bombardment, without a doubt. I looked
at my watch--4.33 A.M.
It was hours afterwards before I realised that this was the opening
bombardment of perhaps the mightiest, most overpowering assault in
military history. Had not the "PREPARE FOR ATTACK" warning
come in I should have been in pyjamas, and might possibly have lain in
bed for two or three minutes, listening quietly and comfortably while
estimating the extent and intensity of the barrage. But this occasion was
different, and I was up and about a couple of minutes after waking.
Opening my door, I encountered the not unpleasant smell of
lachrymatory gas. The Infantry Battalion headquarters' staff were
already moving out of the quarry to their forward station. By 4.40 A.M.
our colonel had talked over the telephone with two of the battery
commanders. Their reports were quite optimistic. "A Battery were wise
in shifting from their old position three days ago," he remarked
cheerfully. "The old position is getting a lot of shelling; there's nothing
falling where they are now. Lots of gas-shelling apparently. It's lucky
the batteries had that daily drill serving the guns with gas-masks on."
The doctor and the acting signal officer came into the mess from their
quarters farther along the quarry. "If this gas-shelling goes on, I guess
we shall all have to have lessons in the deaf-and-dumb talk," puffed the
doctor, pulling off his gas helmet. "Keep that door closed!"
"D Battery's line gone, sir," rang up the sergeant-signaller. "M'Quillan
and Black have gone out on it."
"Keep Corporal Mann and Sapper Winter on the telephone board
to-day," I advised Bliss, the youngster who had come to headquarters
the day before to do signal officer. "The colonel will be doing a lot of
telephoning, and they know his methods. Be sure to keep all the
Scotsmen off the board. The colonel says Scotsmen ought never to be
allowed to be telephonists. Impossible to understand what they say."

By 5 A.M. one of the two officers who overnight had manned the
forward O.P.'s had spoken to us. He was 2000 yards in front of the
most forward battery, but a still small voice sounded confident and
cheery, "A few shells have dropped to the right of the O.P., but there's
no sign of any infantry attack," was his message. We heard nothing
more of him until six weeks afterwards, when his uncle wrote and told
the colonel he was safe, but a prisoner in Germany.
5.15 A.M.: The cook was handing round early morning tea. D Battery
were through again, and we learned that a sergeant had been killed and
one gunner wounded by a 4·2 that had pitched on the edge of the
gun-pit. Two other batteries were cut off from headquarters; however,
we gathered from the battery connected by the buried cable--that a
week before had kept 500 men busy digging for three days--that, as far
as they could see, all our batteries were shooting merrily and according
to programme.
By 6 A.M. the Brigadier-General, C.R.A., had told the colonel that the
situation to left and right was the same as on our immediate front:
enemy bombardment very heavy and continuing, but no infantry attack.
"We'll shave and have breakfast," the colonel said. "Looks as if the
actual attack must be farther north."
By 8 A.M. the shelling near us had died down. It was going to be a
lovely spring day, but there was a curiously heavy, clinging mist.
"Want to be careful of the gas shell-holes when the sun warms up," said
the doctor.
Fresh ammunition was coming up from the waggon lines, and our guns
continued to fire on arranged targets. The only additional casualty was
that of an officer of A Battery,