The runner from Battalion, however, brought quite a different story.
“Been an attack all along the line, Arras to St. Quentin, but it’s been broken up absolutely; never even got the front line.”
The man at the strombos form shifted suspiciously.
“They not bin trying to come over ’ere. I never seen no Germans,” which was not surprising considering that from where he stood he could not see the front line at all.
“No,” he went on, “there’s bin no offensive, and there won’t be one neither. It’s all a wind up.”
At any rate, whether there had been an attempted attack or not, it seemed quite clear that it had not got very far. With that comforting certainty, I returned to the position, and having seen that the guns were clean, descended into the dugout and went to sleep.
About two hours later a perspiring runner arrived. He was quite out of breath from dodging whizzbangs, and was in consequence incapable of logical statement. He said something about “Bullecourt.” The chit he brought explained.
“Bullecourt, Ecoust, Noreil are in the
Hands of the Enemy”
It took at least five minutes to realise what this meant. To think that they had got as far as that. It had seemed so delightfully safe. One had walked along the Ecoust road in daylight, and there was a canteen at Noreil. And then that glorious dugout in Railway Reserve that we had covered with green canvas and festooned with semi-nudities from the Tatler, to think of some lordly Prussian straddling across the table, swigging champagne. It was an unspeakable liberty....
And then a little tardily followed the thought that Ecoust was not so many miles from Monchy, and that if the Germans had got as far as that on the right, there was very little reason why they should not do the same to us—an unpleasant consideration. But still everything seemed so delightfully quiet. Only an occasional whizzbang, or four—five—no one would have thought there was a war on. Still Ecoust was not so very far off; our parish had provided funds for a church army hut at St. Leger. They had been collecting for it hard when I had been on leave. Well, that must have gone west by now....