CHAPTER VIII
CHORUS: "What, Jupiter not so strong as these goddesses?"
PROMETHEUS: "Yes, even he cannot escape destiny."
When young Lieutenant Warburton, temporarily commanding B Company of the Lennox Highlanders, took over his trench, the captain he came to relieve said to him:
"This part is not too unhealthy; they are only thirty yards off, but they are tame Boches. All they ask is to be left alone."
"We will wake things up a bit," said Warburton to his men, when the peaceable warrior had departed.
When wild beasts are too well fed, they become domesticated; but a few well-directed rockets will make them savage again. In virtue of this principle, Warburton, having provided himself with a star shell, instead of sending it straight up fired it horizontally towards the German trenches.
A distracted Saxon sentry cried, "Liquid-fire attack!" The Boche machine-guns began to bark. Warburton, delighted, replied with grenades. The enemy called the artillery to its assistance. A telephone call, a hail of shrapnel, and immediate reprisals by the British big guns.
The next day the German communiqué said: "An attack by the British under cover of liquid-fire at H—— was completely checked by the combined fire of our infantry and artillery."
0275 Private Scott, H.J., who served his King and country under the strenuous Warburton, disapproved heartily of his officer's heroic methods. Not that he was a coward, but the War had taken him by surprise when he had just married a charming girl, and, as Captain Gadsby of the Pink Hussars says, "a married man is only half a man." Scott counted the days he spent in the trenches, and this one was the first of ten, and his chief was reckless.