Old Thing, dozing on a gun seat, woke with a start and stared. He hadn’t been with the Major as long as I had.
“D’you mind if one detachment does the whole thing?” said I. “They’re all just about dead, but C’s got a kick left.”
The Major nodded. Old Thing staggered away, collected two signallers who looked like nothing human, and woke up C sub-section. They came one by one, like silent ghosts through the orchard, tripping over stumps and branches, sightless with sleep denied.
The Major took a signaller and went away. Old Thing and I checked aiming posts over the compass.
Fifteen minutes later the O.P. rang through, and I reported ready.
The sun came out warm and bright, and at nine o’clock we “stood down.” Old Thing and I supported each other into the house and fell on our valises with a laugh. Some one pulled off our gum boots. It must have been a servant but I don’t know. I was asleep before they were off.
The raid came off at one o’clock that night in a pouring rain. The gunners had been carrying ammunition all day after about four hours’ sleep. Old Thing and I had one. The Major didn’t have any. The barrage lasted an hour and a half, during which one sub-section made a ghastly mistake and shot for five full minutes on a wrong switch.
A raid of any size is not just a matter of saying, “Let’s go over the top to-night, and nobble a few of ’em! Shall us?”
And the other fellow in the orthodox manner says, “Let’s”—and over they go with a lot of doughty bombers, and do a lot of dirty work. I wish it were.
What really happens is this. First, the Brigade Major, quite a long way back, undergoes a brain-storm which sends showers of typewritten sheets to all sorts of Adjutants, who immediately talk of transferring to the Anti-Aircraft. Other sheets follow in due course, contradicting the first and giving also a long list of code words of a domestic nature usually, with their key. These are hotly pursued by maps on tracing paper, looking as though drawn by an imaginative child.