“Look here,” began the Colonel, as he laid out the trench map on the table. “Here is where we blow to-night at 6.0” (and he made a pencil dot in the middle of the grass of No Man’s Land midway between the craters opposite the Loop and the Fort. See Map III). “And here, all round here” (he drew his pencil round and round in a blacker and yet blacker circle) “is roughly where the edge of the crater will come. Isn’t that right, Armstrong?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “the crater edge won’t come right up to the front trench, but I don’t want anyone in the front trench, as it will probably be squeezed up in one or two places.”
“Exactly,” said the Colonel. “Do you think this blow will completely connect up the two craters on either side?”
“Oh, certainly,” was the answer. “There’s no question of it. You see, we’ve put in” (here followed figures and explosives incomprehensible to the lay mind). “It’ll be the biggest mine we’ve ever blown in this sector.”
“A surface mine, I suppose?” I asked.
“Almost certainly,” said the R.E. officer. “You see, their gallery is only ten feet above ours, and they might blow any minute. But they’re still working. We wanted to get another twenty feet out before blowing, but it isn’t safe. Anyway, we are bound to smash up all their galleries there completely, though I doubt if we touch their parapet at all.” He spoke almost impatiently, as one who talks of things that have been his main interest for weeks, and tries to explain the whole thing in a few words. “But,” he added, “I don’t want any men in that trench.”
The mining officers always presumed that the infantry clung tenaciously like limpets to their trench, and had to be very carefully removed in case a mine was going up. As a matter of fact, the infantry always made a rule of clearing the trench half as far again as the mining officer enjoined, and were always inclined to want to depart from the abhorred spot long before the time decided upon!
“That’s clear enough,” said the Colonel. “Then from here to here (and he made pencil blobs where I have marked A and B on Map III) we will clear the trench. Get your Lewis guns placed at these two points (A and B), ready to open fire as soon as the mine has gone up. And get your bombers ready to seize the crater edge as soon as it’s dark enough. You’ll want to have some tools and sand-bags ready, and your wirers should have plenty of gooseberries and all the stakes we can get you. Right.”
As I went up 76 Street at half-past five, I realised that I had been rushing about too much, and had forgotten tea. So I sent Davies back and told him to bring up a mug of tea and something to eat. No sooner had he disappeared than I met a party of six R.E.’s, the two leading men carrying canaries in cages. They held them out in front, like you hold out a lantern on a muddy road, and they were covered from head to foot in white chalk-dust. They were doing a sort of half-run down the trench, known among the men as the “R.E. step.” It is always adopted by them if there is any “strafing” going on, or on such occasions as the present, when the charge has been laid, the match lit, and the mine-shaft and galleries, canaries and all, evacuated. (The canaries are used to detect gas fumes, not as pets.)