“I’m from the six-inch section straight in front, sir,” he said. “They’ve captured my guns. Do you think you could take ’em on?”
They were Germans, then, those moving forms!
I swept the glasses round once more anxiously. There were six, seven, ten, creeping up the railway embankment on the left flank behind the battery. Where the hell were our infantry reinforcements? My Babe sent the news back to Brigade while I got a gun on top and fired at the six-inch battery in front over open sights at a thousand yards with fuse 4. The Hun was there all right. He ran at the third round. Then we switched and took on individual groups as they appeared.
The party on the railway worried me. It was improper to have the enemy behind one’s battery. So I got on the ’phone to the Scots Captain and explained the position. It looked as if the Hun had established himself with machine guns in the signal box. The skipper took it on over open sights with H.E. At the fourth round there was only a settling mass of red brick dust. I felt easier in my mind and continued sniping groups of two or three with an added zest and most satisfactory results. The Hun didn’t seem to want to advance beyond Essigny. He hung about the outskirts and, when he showed, ran, crouching low. From his appearance it looked as if he had come to stay. Each of them had a complete pack strapped on to his back with a new pair of boots attached. The rest of the battery dropped their range and searched and swept from the pits. The Skipper joined in the sniping.
A half platoon of infantry came marching at a snail’s pace along the railway behind me,—on the top of course, in full view! I wanted to make sure of those Huns on the embankment, so I whistled to the infantry officer and began semaphoring, a method of signalling at which I rather fancied myself.
It seemed to frighten that infantry lad. At the first waggle he stopped his men and turned them about. In twenty leaps I covered the hundred yards or so between us, screaming curses, and brought him to a halt. He wore glasses and looked like a sucking curate. He may have been in private life but I gave tongue at high pressure, regardless of his feelings, and it was a very red-faced platoon that presently doubled along the other side of the railway under cover towards the embankment, thirsting for blood, mine for choice, Fritz’s from embarras de richesse.
I returned to my sniping, feeling distinctly better, as the little groups were no longer advancing but going back,—and there was that ferocious platoon chivvying them in the rear!
Things might have been much worse.
A megaphone’s all right, but scream down it for three hours and see what happens to your voice. Mine sounded much like a key in a rusty lock. Hunger too was no longer to be denied about three o’clock in the afternoon after breakfast at cock-crow. The six-inch subaltern had tried unsuccessfully to get back to his guns. The Hun, however, had established a machine-gun well the other side of them and approach single-handed was useless. Lord knew where his gunners were! Prisoners, probably. So he returned and asked if I had any use for him. Stout lads of his kidney are not met with every day. So I sent him up the hill to get food and a box respirator. He returned, grinning more cheerily than before, so I left him and the Babe to fight the good fight and went to get a fresh point of view from the tree O.P. up the hill. They seemed to be doing useful work between them by the time I got up the tree, so I left them to it and went to the mess to get some food.