“But it is, sir,” said Vickers. “I was just talking to Division, and they say the trains won’t run in to-night, and that supplies will come up by lorry. And we’ve some heavy lots due in to-night,” he concluded despairingly.
“Let’s see,” said the Colonel, and for five minutes listened and scribbled figures while Vickers turned over notes and indents and ‘phone messages and read them out.
“Yes,” said the Colonel reflectively, when they had finished. “It’ll be a pretty heavy job. But you can put it through all right, Vickers,” he went on cheerfully. “It won’t be as bad as that bit you pulled off the first week on the Somme. I’ll leave it to you, but I’ll be round somewhere if you should want me. When will the first of the lorries come along?”
They talked a few minutes longer, and then the Colonel moved to the door. The “office” was a square shanty built of empty ammunition boxes, with a tarpaulin spread over for a roof. It was furnished with a roughly-built deal table, littered with papers held in clips, stuck on files, or piled in heaps, seats made of 18-pounder boxes, a truckle-bed and blankets in one corner, a telephone on a shelf beside the table. Light and ventilation were provided by the leaving-out of odd boxes here and there in the building up of the walls, and by a wide doorway without a door to it. The whole thing was light and airy enough, but, because it was one of the hot spells of summer, it was warm enough inside to be uncomfortable. Everything in the place—table, papers, bed, seats—was gritty to the touch and thick with dust.
The two men stood in the doorway a minute, looking out on the depleted stacks of ammunition boxes piled in a long curving row beside the roadway that ran in off the main road, swung round, and out on to it again. A few men were working amongst the boxes, their coats off and their grey shirt sleeves rolled up, and a stream of traffic ran steadily past on the main road.
“Pretty quiet here now,” said the Colonel. “But, by the sound of it, things are moving brisk enough up there. You’ll get your turn presently, I expect.”
“I expect so, sir,” said the Lieutenant; “especially if the yarn is true that we push ’em again at daybreak to-morrow.”
“Come over and get your tea before the lorries come in, if you’ve time,” said the Colonel, and moved off.
The Lieutenant stood a moment longer listening to the steady roll and vibrating rumble of the guns up in the line, and then, at a sharp birr-r-r from the telephone, turned sharply into the office.