“Enfiladin’ fire,” said Ratty. “Should think it was too. Why the ’ell don’t they silence the guns doin’ it?”
“Supposed to be in a clump o’ wood over there,” said Johnny. “And it ain’t due to be took for an hour yet.”
The word passed along, and they rose and began to cross the open ground amongst the raining bullets. “There’s our objective,” shouted Johnny as they ran. “That rise—come into action there.” Ratty stared aghast at the rise, and at the spouting columns of smoke and dirt that leaped from it under a steady fall of heavy shells. “That,” he screeched back, “Gorstrewth. Good-bye us then.” But he ran on as well as he could under the weight of the gun on his shoulder. They were both well out to the left of their advancing line and Ratty was instinctively flinching from the direct route into those gusts of flame and smoke. “Keep up,” yelled Johnny. “Remember the trench. You’ll miss the end of it.” Ratty recalled vaguely the line of flags and tape that had wriggled over the practice ground to the last position where they had halted each day and brought their guns into mimic action. He knew he would have slanted to the right to hit the trench end there, so here he also slanted right and presently stumbled thankfully into the broken trench, and pushed along it up the rise. At the top he found himself looking over a gentle slope, the foot of which was veiled in an eddying mist of smoke. A heavy shell burst with a terrifying crash and sent him reeling from the shock. He sat down with a bump, shaken and for the moment dazed, but came to himself with Johnny’s voice bawling in his ear, “Come on, man, come on. Hurt? Quick then—yer gun.” He staggered up and towards an officer whom he could see waving frantically at him and opening and shutting his mouth in shouts that were lost in the uproar. He thrust forward and into a shell-hole beside Johnny and the rest of the gun detachment. His sergeant jumped down beside them shouting and pointing out into the smoke wreaths. “See the wood ... six hundred ... lay on the ground-line—they’re counter-attack——” He stopped abruptly and fell sliding in a tumbled heap down the crater side on top of the gun. The officer ran back mouthing unheard angry shouts at them again. Ratty was getting angry himself. How could a man get into action with a fellow falling all over his gun like that? They dragged the sergeant’s twitching body clear and Ratty felt a pang of regret for his anger. He’d been a good chap, the sergeant.... But anger swallowed him again as he dragged his gun clear. It was drenched with blood. “Nice bizness,” he said savagely, “if my breech action’s clogged up.” A loaded belt slipped into place and he brought the gun into action with a savage jerk on the loading lever, looked over his sights, and layed them on the edge of the wood he could just dimly see through the smoke. He could see nothing to fire at—cursed smoke was so thick—but the others were firing hard—must be something there. He pressed his thumbs on the lever and his gun began to spurt a stream of fire and lead, the belt racing and clicking through, the breech clacking smoothly, the handles jarring sharply in his fingers.
The hillock was still under heavy shell-fire. They had been warned in practice attack that there would probably be shell-fire, and here it was, shrieking, crashing, tearing the wrecked ground to fresh shapes of wreckage, spouting in fountains of black smoke and earth, whistling and hurtling in jagged fragments, hitting solidly and bursting in whirlwinds of flame and smoke. Ratty had no time to think of the shells. He strained his eyes over the sights on the foot of the dimly seen trees, held his gun steady and spitting its jets of flame and lead, until word came to him, somehow or from somewhere to cease firing. The attack had been wiped out, he heard said. He straightened his bent shoulders and discovered with immense surprise that one shoulder hurt, that his jacket was soaked with blood.
“Nothing more than a good Blighty one,” said the bearer who tied him up. “Keep you home two-three months mebbe.”
“Good enough,” said Ratty. “I’ll be back in time to see the finish,” and lit a cigarette contentedly.
Back in the Aid Post later he heard from one of the Jocks who had been down there in the smoke somewhere between the machine-guns and the wood, that the front line was already well consolidated. He heard too that the German counter-attack had been cut to pieces, and that the open ground before our new line front was piled with their dead. “You fellies was just late enough wi’ your machine-guns,” said the Highlander. “In anither three-fower meenits they’d a been right on top o’ us.”
“Late be blowed,” said Ratty. “We was on the right spot exackly at the programme time o’ the plan. We’d rehearsed the dash thing an’ clocked it too often for me not to be sure o’ that. We was there just when we was meant to be, an’ that was just when they knew we’d be wanted. Whole plunky attack went like clockwork, far’s our bit o’ the plans went.”
But it was two days later and snug in bed in a London hospital, when he had read the dispatches describing the battle, that he had his last word on “planned attacks.”
“Lumme,” he said to the next bed, “I likes this dispatch of ole ’Indenburg’s. Good mile an’ a half we pushed ’em back, an’ held all the ground, an’ took 6,000 prisoners; an’, says ’Indenburg, ‘the British attack was completely repulsed ... only a few crater positions were abandoned by us according to plan.’”