“Probably ours,” said Larry; “the yarn was going that we were to attack this morning, although some said it was for tomorrow.”
“Anyway,” said Pug, “if our lot ’as gone over they’ve either got it in the neck, and ’ad to ’ook it back again, or else they’re over the No-Man’s-Land, and into the fust line.”
“That’s what,” said Billy Simson. “And ’ark at the bombs and ’and-grenades bustin’ off nineteen to the dozen. That means we’re bombin’ our way along the trenches and chuckin’ ’em down into the dugouts.”
It was true that the distinctive sound of the bursting bombs had risen again to a renewed activity, and from somewhere further up or down the line the rifle fire commenced again, and rose to one long, continuous full-bodied roar. The sound spread and beat down in rolling waves nearer and nearer, ran outward again on both flanks, continued loud and unceasing.
The Stonewalls were formed up and moved on again, and presently came upon, and marched into, the ruined fragments of a village, with shattered and tumble-down houses lining the sides of the road. They began to notice a new and significant sound, the thin whistling and piping of bullets passing high over their heads, the smack and crack of an occasional one catching some upper portion of the ruined houses past which they marched. Here, too, they began to meet the first of the backwash of battle, the limping figures of men with white bandages about their heads, arms, and bodies; the still forms at full length on the sagging, reddened stretchers. At one of the houses in the village a Red Cross flag hung limp over a broken archway, and through this the procession passed in an ever quickening stream.
The village street rose to the crest of a gentle slope, and when the Stonewalls topped the rise, and began to move down the long gentle decline on the other side, they seemed to step from the outer courts into the inner chambers of war. Men hung about the broken fragments of the buildings; ammunition carts were drawn up in angles and corners of the remaining walls; a couple of ambulances jolted slowly and carefully up the hill towards them; the road was pitted and cratered with shell holes; the trees, that lined both sides of it, trailed broken branches and jagged ends of smashed off trunks, bore huge white scars and patches, and strewed the road with showers of leaves and twigs. The houses of the village, too, on this side of the slope, had been reduced to utter ruin. Only here and there were two-or three-sided portions of a house still standing; the rest were no more than heaped and tangled rubbish-heaps of stone and brick, broken beams and woodwork, shattered pieces of furniture, and litter of red tiles.
By now the bullets were singing and whisking overhead, crackling with vicious emphasis against the trees and walls. And now, suddenly and without the slightest warning, four shells rushed and crashed down upon the road amongst the ruined buildings. The men who had been hanging about in the street vanished hastily into such cover as they could find, and the Stonewalls, tramping steadily down the shell-smashed, rubbish-strewn street, flinched and ducked hastily to the quick rush and crash of another string of shells. An order was passed back, and the column divided into two, half taking one side of the road, and half the other; the rear halting and lying down, while the front moved off by platoons, with some fifty to a hundred yards between each.
A German battery was evidently making a target of this portion of the road, for the shells continued to pound up and down its length. After the sharp burst of one quartette fairly between the ranks of a marching platoon, there was a call for stretchers, and the regimental stretcher-bearers came up at the double, busied themselves for a few minutes about some crumpled forms, lifted them, and moved off along the road back to the Red Cross flag of the dressing station. The shell-swept stretch of road was growing uncomfortably dangerous, and it was with a good deal of relief that the Stonewalls saw their leading platoon turn aside and disappear into the entrance of a communication trench.
“This ’ere,” said Pug, with a sigh of satisfaction, “is a blinkin’ sight more like the thing; and why them lazy beggars of a Staff ’aven’t ’ad this communication trench took back a bit further beats me.”
“It sure is a comfortable feeling,” agreed Kentucky, “to hear those bullets whistling along upstairs, and we safe down below ground level.”