“That’s easy,” said the telephonist. “We’d be here, an’ likely to stay here,” and raised his voice again to shout a message to the officer.
They sat another five minutes with the walls shivering slightly or quaking violently as the shells fell close or at a distance. The telephonist sat apparently half-asleep, his eyes vacant, and his shoulders rounded, his voice raised at times to shout to the Forward Officer, sunk again to a monotonous drawl repeating the officer’s words into the telephone. Once he glanced at Kentucky and spoke briefly. “Why don’t you get down to it an’ ’ave a kip?” he said. And when Kentucky said he didn’t feel particularly sleepy, and anyhow must move along in five or ten minutes, “My Gawd,” said the telephonist; “not sleepy! An’ missin’ a chance for ten minutes’ kip. My Gawd!”
When the shelling appeared to have slackened Kentucky crawled up the stair, and after a word with the officer set out on his return journey. Ahead where he judged the German position to be he could see a swirling cloud of dirty smoke, torn asunder every moment by quick-following flashes and springing fountains of earth and more belching smoke-clouds that towered upward in thick spreading columns, and thinned and rolled outward again to add still further to the dirty reek. The earth shook to the clamorous uproar of the guns, the air pulsed to the passage of countless shells, their many-toned but always harsh and strident shriekings. The greater weight of metal was from the British side, but as he hurried forward, stumbling and slipping over the wet and broken ground, Kentucky heard every now and then the rush and crash of German shells bursting near him. The rolling, pealing thunder of the guns, the thuds and thumps and bangings of their and their shells’ reports, were so loud and so sustained that they drowned the individual sounds of approaching shells, and several times Kentucky was only aware of their burst on seeing the black spout of earth and smoke, on hearing the flying fragments sing and whine close past or thud into the wet ground near him.
He toiled on and came at last to an enormous shell crater in which a full dozen of the Anzacs squatted or stood. He halted a moment to speak to them, to ask how things were going. He found he had come through the main Anzac line without knowing it, so broken and uptorn was the ground, and so well were the men concealed in the deeper scattered holes. This dozen men were well in advance and close up on the line which held the Stonewalls and which they were supporting.
“Your mob is just about due to slam at ’em again, mate,” said a sergeant, looking at his wrist-watch. “You’d better hustle some if you want to go to it along wi’ yer own cobbers. There goes the guns liftin’ now. Time, gentlemen, please,” and he snapped down the cover of his watch and stood to look out.
Kentucky climbed out and ran on. The thunder of the guns had not ceased for an instant, but the fire-flashes and spurting smoke clouds no longer played about the same spot as before. The guns had lifted their fire and were pouring their torrent of shells further back behind the spot marked for assault. Now, as Kentucky knew well, was the designed moment for the attack, and he looked every moment to see a line of figures rise and move forward. But he saw nothing except the tumbled sea of broken ground, saw no sign of rising men, no sign of movement. For full two or three minutes he hunted for the Stonewalls, for the line he wanted to rejoin; and for those precious minutes no beat of rifle fire arose, no hail of bullets swept the ground over which the attack should pass. Then a machine gun somewhere in the haze ahead began to chatter noisily, and, quickly, one after another joined it and burst into a streaming fire that rose rapidly to a steady and unbroken roar. Shells began to sweep and crash over the open too, and Kentucky ducked down into a deep shell-hole for cover.
“What’s gone wrong?” he wondered. “They were sure meant to start in when the guns lifted, and they’d have been well across by this. Now the Boche machine-gunners have had time to haul the guns from their dug-outs and get busy. What’s wrong? Surely the battalion hasn’t been clean wiped out.”
He peered cautiously over the edge of his hole, but still he saw no sign of movement. He was completely puzzled. Something was wrong, but what? The Anzacs had told him the attack was due, and those lifting guns had backed their word. And yet there was no attack. He waited for long minutes—minutes empty of attack, empty of sign, empty of everything except the raving machine guns and the storming bullets.