We came to Jussy and Flavy-le-Martel, an undulating country of once-wooded hillsides now stamped under the Hun’s heel and where even then the spiteful long-range shell came raking in the neatly swept muck heaps that once had been villages. The French were there, those blue-clad, unshaven poilus who, having seen their land laid waste, turned their eyes steadily towards Germany with the gleam of faith in them that moves mountains, officered by men who called them “mes enfants” and addressed each one as “thou.”
We had reached the southern end of the British line and were to take over the extra bit down to Barisis. Our own zone was between Essigny and Benay and in a morning of thick fog the Divisional Battery Commanders and ourselves went up to the gun positions held by the slim French 75’s. They welcomed us politely, bowing us into scratches in the earth and offering sausages and red wine and cigarettes of Caporal. It appeared that peace reigned on that front. Not a shell fell, hardly was a round ever fired. Then followed maps and technical details of pin-points and zero lines and O.P.’s and the colour of S.O.S. rockets. We visited the guns and watched them fire a round or two and discussed the differences between them and our eighteen-pounders and at last after much shaking of hands bade them au revoir and left them in the fog.
The relief took place under cover of night without a hitch, in a silence unbroken by any gun, and finally, after having journeyed to the O.P. with the French Battery Commander, up to our thighs in mud, fired on the zero point to check the line, reported ourselves ready to take on an S.O.S. and watched the French officer disappear in the direction of his wagon line, we found ourselves masters of the position.
The fog did eventually lift, revealing the least hopeful of any gun positions it has ever been my lot to occupy. The whole country was green, a sort of turf. In this were three great white gashes of upturned chalk visible to the meanest intelligence as being the three battery positions. True, they were under the crest from any Hun O.P., but that didn’t minimize the absurdity. There were such things as balloons and aeroplanes. Further inspection revealed shell holes neatly bracketing the guns, not many, but quite sufficient to prove that Fritz had done his job well. Beside each gun pit was a good deep dugout for the detachment and we had sleeping quarters that would stop at least a four-two. The mess was a quaint little hut of hooped iron above ground, camouflaged with chalky earth, big enough to hold a table and four officers, if arranged carefully. We rigged up shelves and hung new fighting maps and Kirchners and got the stove to burn and declared ourselves ready for the war again. We spent long mornings exploring the trenches, calling on a rather peevish infantry whose manners left much to be desired, and found that as usual the enemy had all the observation on the opposite ridge. Behind the trench system we came upon old gun positions shelled out of all recognition, and looked back over an empty countryside with rather a gloomy eye. It was distinctly unprepossessing. If there were ever a show——
So we played the gramophone by night and invented a knife-throwing game in the door of the hut and waited for whatever Fate might have in store for us. The Captain had gone on leave from Chuignolles. The night after his return he came up to the guns as my own leave was due again. So having initiated him into the defence scheme and the S.O.S. rules I packed up my traps and departed,—as it turned out for good.
Fate decreed that my fighting was to be done with the battery which I had helped to make and whose dead I had buried.
On my return from leave fourteen days later, towards the end of February, I was posted back to them. The end of February,—a curious period of mental tightening up, of expectation of some colossal push received with a certain incredulity. He’d push all right, but not here. And yet, in the depths of one’s being, there formed a vague apprehension that made one restless and took the taste out of everything. The work seemed unsatisfactory in the new battle positions to which we were moved, a side-step north, seven thousand yards from the front line, just behind Essigny which peeped over a million trenches to St. Quentin. The men didn’t seem to have their hearts in it and one found fault in everything. The new mess, a wooden hut under trees on a hilltop with a deep dugout in it, was very nice, allowing us to bask in the sun whenever it shone and giving a wonderful view over the whole zone, but seemed to lack privacy. One yearned to be alone sometimes and always there was some one there. The subalterns were practically new to me, and although one laughed and talked one couldn’t settle down as in the old days with the Major and Pip Don. The Scots Captain was also occupying the hilltop. It was good to go off on long reconnaissances with him and argue violently on all the known philosophies and literatures, to challenge him to revolver shooting competitions and try and escape the eternal obsession that clouded one’s brain, an uneasiness that one couldn’t place, like the feeling that makes one cold in the pit of the stomach before going down to get ready for a boxing competition, magnified a million times.
The weather was warm and sunny after misty dawns and the whole country was white with floating cobwebs. The last touches were being put to the gun position and a narrow deep trench ran behind the guns which were a quarter of a mile beyond the hilltop, down beyond the railway line under camouflage in the open. Word came round that “The Attack,” was for this day, then that, then the other, and the heavy guns behind us made the night tremble with their counter-preparation work, until at last one said, “Please God, they’ll get on with it, and let’s get it over!” The constant cry of “Wolf! Wolf!” was trying.
Everybody knew about it and all arrangements were made, extra ammunition, and extra gunners at the positions, details notified as to manning O.P.’s, the probable time at which we should have to open fire being given as ten o’clock at night at extreme range.