I gave the order to lift, straining my ears.
There came no pop. I held my breath so that I might hear better,—and only heard the thumping of my heart. We lifted again and again.—
I kept them firing for three full seconds after the allotted time before I gave the order to cease fire. The eighteen minutes—lifetimes—were over and that third pop didn’t come till we had stopped. Then having covered the guns we ran helter-skelter, each man finding his own way to the cellar through the most juicy bombardment we’d heard for quite twenty-four hours.
Every man answered to his name in the cellar darkness and there was much laughter and tobacco smoke while we got back our breath.
Half an hour later their bombardment ceased. The sergeant and I went back to have a look at the guns. Number 5 was all right. Number 6, however, had had a direct hit, one wheel had burnt away and she lay on her side, looking very tired.
I don’t know how many other guns had been knocked out in the batteries taking part, but, over and above the value of the ammunition, that trial barrage cost at least one eighteen-pounder! And but for a bit of luck would have cost the lives of the detachment.
9
The Major decided to move the battery and gained the reluctant consent of the Group Commander who refused to believe that there had been any shelling there till he saw the gun lying burnt and smashed and the pits burnt and battered. The Hun seemed to take a permanent dislike to the Asylum and its neighbourhood. It may have been coincidence but any time a man showed there a rain of shells chivvied him away. It took the fitter and the detachment about seven trips before they got a new wheel on, and at any hour of day or night you could bet on at least a handful of four-twos. The gas was intermittent.
At four o’clock in the morning after a worrying night when I had gone out twice to extinguish gun pits reported on fire, the Major announced that he was going to get the gun out and disappeared out of the cellar into the shell-lit darkness.
Two hours later he called up from Group Headquarters and told me to get the other out and take her to Archie Square, a square near the station, so-called because a couple of anti-aircraft guns had used it as an emplacement in the peace days. With one detachment on each drag rope we ran the gauntlet in full daylight of a four-two bombardment, rushing shell holes and what had once been flower beds, keeping at a steady trot, the sweat pouring off us.