Pushed and the Return Push Part 31

"Yes, sir; it's been through once, but it went half an hour ago. I expect my signallers back any minute."

"Very well! you can be working out your switch angle and your angle of sight while you wait."

Johns had now got his battery to work, and the sight of his sh.e.l.ls bursting among the hedges and shrubs fired his Celtic enthusiasm and dissipated the nervousness he had felt in the colonel's presence. "Look at that! isn't that a fine burst?" he called, clutching my arm,--"and see that one. Isn't it a topper?"

An exclamation from the colonel, who had stood sphinx-like, his gla.s.ses directed upon the grey house, made every one turn. "I've spotted him,"

he called, his voice vibrating. "He's at the top-floor window nearest to us.... There he goes again.... I heard the 'ping' and saw dust come out of the window.... Now then, is that line through yet?"

The line wasn't through, and the excitement of the hunt being upon us, every one felt like cursing all telephone lines--they always did break down when they were most wanted. The five minutes before this line was reported to be through seemed an hour, and when the telephonist had laboriously to repeat the orders, each one of us itched to seize the telephone and shout ribald abuse at the man at the other end.

The first sh.e.l.l went into the trees behind the house. So did the round, three hundred yards shorter in range, by which it had been hoped to complete a plus and minus bracketing of the target. After a bold shortening of the range, the subaltern, directing the shooting of A Battery's guns, was about to order a wide deflection to the left, but the colonel stopped him. "Your line is all right," he said. "It looks as if you were too much to the right from the 'O.P.', but that's the deceptiveness of flank observation. The range is short, that's all.

Give it another hundred yards and see what happens."

A direct hit resulted in twenty rounds, and there was jubilation in the "O.P." M'Whirter of C Battery turned up, also Captain Hopton of B, and preparations for a window-to-window searching and harrying of the Boche machine-gunners were eagerly planned. It was 2 P.M. now, and the colonel had forgotten all about lunch. "I think we can get back now,"

he said brightly. "Register on that house," he added, turning to the officers in the pit, "and you can give that machine-gunner a hot time whenever he dares to become troublesome."

We walked back to the sunken road in the highest of spirits, and after the major of the Machine-Gun Corps, who had watched the shooting, had thanked the colonel and expressed the view that the Boche machine-gunner might in future be reckoned among the down-and-outs, the colonel talked of other things besides gunnery.

I told him that though on my last leave to England I had noted a new seriousness running through the minds of people, I had not altogether found the humble unselfishness, the chastened spirit that many thinkers had prophesied as inevitable and necessary before the coming of victory.

"But what about the men who have been out here? Won't they be the people of England after the war--the real representative people?"

returned the colonel, his eyes lighting up as he talked. "Theirs has been the chastening experience, at any rate. The man who comes through this must be the better man for it."

The conversation lost its seriousness when we discussed whether Army habits would weave themselves into the ordinary workaday world as a result of the war.

"Some of them would be good for us," said the colonel happily. "Here's one"--picking up a rifle and carrying it at the slope--"I'm going to carry this to the first salvage dump, and help to keep down taxation."

"It might be an interesting experiment to run Society on Active Service lines," I put in. "Fancy being made an Acting-Baronet and then a Temporary-Baronet before getting substantive rank. And the thought of an Acting-Duke paralyses one."

We laughed and walked on. Along the road leading back into the village we met a bombardier, who saluted the colonel with the direct glance and the half-smile that betokens previous acquaintance. The colonel stopped. "What's your name, Bombardier?" he demanded. The bombardier told him. "Weren't you in my battery?"

"Yes, sir," said the man, smiling, "when we first came to France....

I'd like to be back in the old Division, sir."

"I'll see what can be done," said the colonel, taking his name and number.

"I believe I remember him, because he often came before me as a prisoner," he told me, with a humorous look, as we continued our walk.

"Very stout fellow, though."

It was a quarter-past three now, and the experiences of the day had sharpened the appet.i.te. The colonel wasn't finished yet, however. He turned into the Infantry Brigade Headquarters, and spent a quarter of an hour with the brigadier general and his brigade-major discussing the artillery work that would be required for the next big advance. We discovered a lane we hadn't walked through before, and went that way to our farmhouse. It was four o'clock when we got back, and two batteries had prisoners waiting to go before the colonel. So lunch was entirely wiped off the day's programme, and at a quarter to five we sat down to tea and large quant.i.ties of b.u.t.tered toast.

XIX. "THE COLONEL----"

We knew now that November 4th was the date fixed for the next battle.

The C.R.A. had offered the Brigade two days at the waggon lines, as a rest before zero day. The colonel didn't want to leave our farm, but two nights at the waggon lines would mean respite from night-firing for the gunners; so he had asked the battery commanders to choose between moving out for the two days and remaining in the line. They had decided to stay.

It turned to rain on October 29th. Banks of watery, leaden-hued clouds rolled lumberingly from the south-west; beneath a slow depressing drizzle the orchard became a melancholy vista of dripping branches and sodden muddied gra.s.s. The colonel busied himself with a captured German director and angle-of-sight instrument, juggling with the working parts to fit them for use with our guns--he had the knack of handling intricate mechanical appliances. The adjutant curled himself up among leave-rosters and ammunition and horse returns; I began writing the Brigade Diary for October, and kept looking over the sandbag that replaced the broken panes in my window for first signs of finer weather.

The colonel and the adjutant played Wilde and myself at bridge that night--the first game in our mess since April. Then the colonel and I stayed up until midnight, talking and writing letters: he showed me a diminutive writing-pad that his small son had sent by that day's post.

"That's a reminder that I owe him a letter," he smiled. "I must write him one.... He's just old enough now to understand that I was coming back to the war, the last time I said good-bye." The colonel said this with tender seriousness.

A moaning wind sprang up during the night, and, sleepless, I tossed and turned upon my straw mattress until past two o'clock. One 42 fell near enough to rattle the remaining window-panes. The wail through the air and the soft "plop" of the gas sh.e.l.ls seemed attuned to the dirge-like soughing of the wind.

The morning broke calm and bright. There was the stuffiness of yesterday's day indoors to be shaken off. I meant to go out early. It was our unwritten rule to leave the colonel to himself at breakfast, and I drove pencil and ruler rapidly, collating the intelligence reports from the batteries. I looked into the mess again for my cap and cane before setting forth. The colonel was drinking tea and reading a magazine propped up against the sugar-basin. "I'm going round the batteries, sir," I said. "Is there anything you want me to tell them--or are you coming round yourself later?"

"No; not this morning. I shall call on the infantry about eleven--to talk about this next battle."

"Right, sir!"

He nodded, and I went out into the fresh cool air of a bracing autumn day.

I did my tour of the batteries, heard Beadle's jest about the new groom who breathed a surprised "Me an' all?" when told that he was expected to accompany his officer on a ride up to the battery; and, leaving A Battery's cottage at noon, crossed the brook by the little brick bridge that turned the road towards our Headquarters farm, six hundred yards away.

"The colonel rang up a few minutes ago to say that our notice-board at the bottom of the lane had been blown down. He wanted it put right, because the General is coming to see him this afternoon, and might miss the turning.... I've told Sergeant Starling.

"Colonel B---- came in about eleven o'clock," went on the adjutant.

"He's going on leave and wanted to say good-bye to the colonel."

"Where is the colonel now," I asked, picking up some Divisional reports that had just arrived.

"He's with the Heavies--he's been to the Infantry. I told him Colonel B---- had called, and he said he'd go round and see him--their mess is in the village, isn't it?"

At twelve minutes past one the adjutant, Wilde, and myself sat down to lunch. "The colonel said he wouldn't be late--but we needn't wait,"

said the adjutant.

"No; we don't want to wait," agreed Wilde, who had been munching chocolate.

At a quarter-past one; "Crump!" "Crump!" "Crump!"--the swift, crashing arrival of three high-velocity sh.e.l.ls.

"I'll bet that's not far from A Battery," called Wilde, jumping up; and then settled down again to his cold beef and pickles.

"First he's sent over to-day," said the adjutant. "He's been awfully quiet these last two days."

Manning had brought in the bread-and-b.u.t.ter and apple pudding that Meddings had made to celebrate his return from leave, when the door opened abruptly. Gillespie, the D.A. gas officer stood there. It was the habit to complain with mock-seriousness that Gillespie timed his visits with our meal-times. I had begun calling "Here he is again,"

when something drawn, something staring in his lean Scotch face, stopped me. I thought he was ill.

The adjutant and Wilde were gazing curiously at him. My eyes left his face. I noticed that his arms were pushed out level with his chest; he grasped an envelope between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. His lower jaw had fallen; his lips moved, and no sound came from them.

The three of us at the table rose to our feet. All our faculties were lashed to attention.

Gillespie made a sort of gulp. "I've got terrible news," he said at last.

I believe that one thought, and only one thought, circuited through the minds of the adjutant, Wilde, and myself: The colonel!--we knew! we knew!

"The colonel----" went on Gillespie. His face twitched.