"I believe that is so," said the Colonel. "Bobby, take a good look at the approaches to Longueval. That is the scene of to-morrow"s const.i.tutional."
Bobby and Angus obediently scanned the village through their gla.s.ses.
Probably they did not learn much. One bombarded French village is very like another bombarded French village. A cowering a.s.semblage of battered little houses; a pitiful little main street, with its eviscerated shops and _estaminets_; a shattered church-spire. Beyond that, an enclosure of splintered stumps that was once an orchard.
Below all, cellars, reinforced with props and sandbags, and filled with machine-guns. _Voila tout_!
Presently the Gunner Captain pa.s.sed word down to the telephone operator to order the battery to cease fire.
"Knocking off?" inquired Wagstaffe.
"For the present, yes. We are only registering this morning. Not all our batteries are going at once, either. We don"t want Brother Boche to know our strength until we tune up for the final chorus. We calculate that--"
"There is a comfortable sense of decency and order about the way we fight nowadays," said Colonel Kemp. "It is like working out a problem in electrical resistance by a nice convenient algebraical formula.
Very different from the state of things last year, when we stuck it out by employing rule of thumb and hanging on by our eyebrows."
"The only problem we can"t quite formulate is the machine-gun," said Leslie. The Boche"s dug-outs here are thirty feet deep. When crumped by our artillery he withdraws his infantry and leaves his machine-gunners behind, safe underground. Then, when our guns lift and the attack comes over, his machine-gunners appear on the surface, hoist their guns after them with a sort of tackle arrangement, and get to work on a prearranged band of fire. The infantry can"t do them in until No Man"s Land is crossed, and--well, they don"t all get across, that"s all! However, _I have_ heard rumours--"
"So have we all," said Colonel Kemp.
"I forgot to tell you, Colonel," interposed Wagstaffe, "that I met young Osborne at Divisional Headquarters last night. You remember, he left us some time ago to join the Hush! Hush! Brigade."
"I remember," said the Colonel.
By this time the party, including the Gunner Captain, were filing along a communication trench, lately the property of some German gentlemen, on their way back to headquarters.
"Did he tell you anything, Wagstaffe?" continued Colonel Kemp.
"Not much. Apparently the time of the H.H.B. is not yet. But he made an appointment with me for this evening--in the gloaming, so to speak.
He is sending a car. If all he says is true, the Boche _Emma Gee_ is booked for an eye-opener in a few weeks" time."
II
That evening a select party of sight-seers were driven to a secluded spot behind the battle line. Here they were met by Master Osborne, obviously inflated with some important matter.
"I"ve got leave from my C.O. to show you the sights, sir," he announced to Colonel Kemp. "If you will all stand here and watch that wood on the opposite side of this clearing, you may see something.
We don"t show ourselves much except in late evening, so this is our parade hour."
The little group took up its appointed stand and waited in the gathering dusk. In the east the sky was already twinkling with intermittent Verey lights. All around the British guns were thundering forth their hymns of hate--full-throated now, for the hour for the next great a.s.sault was approaching.
Wagstaffe"s thoughts went back to a certain soft September night last year, when he and Blaikie had stood on the eastern outskirts of Bethune listening to a similar overture--the prelude to the Battle of Loos. But this overture was ten times more awful, and, from a material British point of view, ten times more inspiring. It would have thrilled old Blaikie"s fighting spirit, thought Wagstaffe. But Loos had taken his friend from him, and he, Wagstaffe, only was left. What did fate hold in store for him to-morrow? he wondered. And Bobby? They had both escaped marvellously so far. Well, better men had gone before them. Perhaps--
Fingers of steel bit into his biceps muscle, and the excited whinny of Angus M"Lachlan besought him to look!
_Down in the forest something stirred_. But it was not the note of a bird, as the song would have us believe. From the depths of the wood opposite came a crackling, crunching sound, as of some prehistoric beast forcing its way through tropical undergrowth. And then, suddenly, out from the thinning edge there loomed a monster--a monstrosity. It did not glide, it did not walk. It wallowed. It lurched, with now and then a laborious heave of its shoulders. It fumbled its way over a low bank matted with scrub. It crossed a ditch, by the simple expedient of rolling the ditch out flat, and waddled forward. In its path stood a young tree. The monster arrived at the tree and laid its chin lovingly against the stem. The tree leaned back, crackled, and a.s.sumed a horizontal position. In the middle of the clearing, twenty yards farther on, gaped an enormous sh.e.l.l-crater, a present from the Kaiser. Into this the creature plunged blindly, to emerge, panting and puffing, on the farther side. Then it stopped. A magic opening appeared in its stomach, from which emerged, grinning, a British subaltern and his grimy a.s.sociates.
And that was our friends" first encounter with a "Tank." The secret--unlike most secrets in this publicity-ridden war--had been faithfully kept; so far the Hush! Hush! Brigade had been little more than a legend even to the men high up. Certainly the omniscient Hun received the surprise of his life when, in the early mist of a September morning some weeks later, a line of these selfsame tanks burst for the first time upon his incredulous vision, waddling grotesquely up the hill to the ridge which had defied the British infantry so long and so bloodily--there to squat complacently down on the top of the enemy"s machine-guns, or spout destruction from her own up and down beautiful trenches which had never been intended for capture. In fact, Brother Boche was quite plaintive about the matter.
He described the employment of such engines as wicked and brutal, and opposed to the recognised usages of warfare. When one of these low-comedy vehicles (named the _Creme-de-Menthe_) ambled down the main street of the hitherto impregnable village of Flers, with hysterical British Tommies slapping her on the back, he appealed to the civilised world to step in and forbid the combination of vulgarism and barbarity.
"Let us at least fight like gentlemen," said the Hun, with simple dignity. "Let us stick to legitimate military devices--the murder of women and children, and the emission of chlorine gas. But Tanks--no!
One must draw the line somewhere!"
But the ill-bred _Creme-de-Menthe_ took no notice. None whatever. She simply went waddling on--towards Berlin.
"An experiment, of course," commented Colonel Kemp, as they returned to headquarters--"a fantastic experiment. But I wish they were ready now. I would give something to see one of them leading the way into action to-morrow. It might mean saving the lives of a good many of my boys."
XI
THE LAST SOLO
It was dawn on Sat.u.r.day morning, and the second phase of the Battle of the Somme was more than twenty-four hours old. The programme had opened with a night attack, always the most difficult and uncertain of enterprises, especially for soldiers who were civilians less than two years ago. But no undertaking is too audacious for men in whose veins the wine of success is beginning to throb. And this undertaking, this hazardous gamble, had succeeded all along the line. During the past day and night, more than three miles of the German second system of defences, from Bazentin le Pet.i.t to the edge of Delville Wood, had received their new tenants; and already long streams of not altogether reluctant Hun prisoners were being escorted to the rear by perspiring but cheerful gentlemen with fixed bayonets.
Meanwhile--in case such of the late occupants of the line as were still at large should take a fancy to revisit their previous haunts, working-parties of infantry, pioneers, and sappers were toiling at full pressure to reverse the parapets, run out barbed wire, and bestow machine-guns in such a manner as to produce a continuous lattice-work of fire along the front of the captured position.
All through the night the work had continued. As a result, positions were now tolerably secure, the intrepid "Buzzers" had included the newly grafted territory in the nervous system of the British Expeditionary Force, and Battalion Headquarters and Supply Depots had moved up to their new positions.
To Colonel Kemp and his Adjutant c.o.c.kerell, ensconced in a dug-out thirty feet deep, furnished with a real bed, electric-light fittings, and ornaments obviously made in Germany, entered Major Wagstaffe, encrusted with mud, but as imperturbable as ever. He saluted.
"Good-morning, sir. You seem to have struck a cushie little home time."
"Yes. The Boche officer harbours no false modesty about acknowledging his desire for creature comforts. That is where he scores off people like you and me, who pretend we like sleeping in mud. Have you been round the advanced positions?"
"Yes. There is some pretty hard fighting going on in the village itself--the Boche still holds the north-west corner--and in the wood on the right. "A" Company are holding a line of broken-down cottages on our right front, but they can"t make any further move until they get more bombs. The Boche is occupying various buildings opposite, but in no great strength at present. However, he seems to have plenty of machine-guns."
"I have sent up more bombs," said the Colonel. "What about "B"
Company?"
""B" have reached their objective, and consolidated. "C" and "D" are lying close up, ready to go forward in support when required. I think "A" could do with a little a.s.sistance."
"I don"t want to send up "C" and "D"," replied the Colonel, "until the Divisional Reserve arrives. The Brigade has just telephoned through that reinforcements are on the way. When they get here, we can afford to stuff in the whole battalion. Are "A" Company capable of handling the situation at present?"
"Yes, I think so. Little is directing his platoons from a convenient cellar. He was in touch with them all when I left. But it is possible that the Boche may make a rush when it grows a bit lighter. At present he is too demoralised to attempt anything beyond intermittent machine-gun fire."
Colonel Kemp turned to c.o.c.kerell.
"Get Captain Little on the telephone," he said, "and tell him, if the enemy displays any disposition to counter-attack, to let me know at once." Then he turned to Wagstaffe, and asked the question which always lurks furtively on the tongue of a commanding officer.
"Many--casualties?"
""A" Company have caught it rather badly crossing the open. "B" got off lightly. Glen is commanding them now: Waddell was killed leading his men in the rush to the final objective."
Colonel Kemp sighed.
"Another good boy gone--veteran, rather. I must write to his wife.
Fairly newly married, I fancy?"