Reddie and Walk had stood up in their cock-pits and, without a spoken word, were solemnly shaking hands.
Reddie looked overboard at the officer on the ground. “You may believe it, Johnny, or you may not,” he said, “but we’ve been down into Hunland.”
“Down into hell!” said Johnny. “Quit jokin’. What kept you so late?”
“You’ve said it, Johnny,” said Reddie soberly. “Down into hell—and out again.”
They shook hands again, solemnly.
XVIII
THE FINAL OBJECTIVE
It was all apt to be desperately confusing—the smoke, the shapeless shell-cratered ground, the deafening unceasing tempest of noise—but out of all this confusion and the turmoil of their attack there were one or two things that remained clear in the mind of Corporal; and after all they were the things that counted. One was that he was in charge for the moment of the remains of the company, that when their last officer was knocked out he, Corporal Ackroyd, had taken the officer’s wrist watch and brief instructions to “Carry on—you know what to do”; and the other that they had, just before the officer was casualtied, reached the “pink-line objective.”