[CHAPTER XIII]
WITH THE TANKS
Soon after Kentucky rejoined them the Stonewalls were moved forward a little clear of the village they had helped to take, just as one or two heavy shells whooped over from the German guns and dropped crashing on the ground that had been theirs. The men were spread out along shell holes and told to dig in for better cover because a bit of a redoubt on the left flank hadn’t been taken and bullets were falling in enfilade from it.
“Dig, you cripples,” said the sergeant, “dig in. Can’t you see that if they counter-attack from the front now you’ll get shot in the back while you’re lining the front edge of those shell holes. Get to it there, you Pug.”
“Shot in the back, linin’ the front,” said Pug as the sergeant passed on. “Is it a conundrum, Kentuck?”
“Sounds sort of mixed,” admitted Kentucky. “But it’s tainted some with the truth. That redoubt is half rear to us. If another lot comes at us in front and we get up on the front edge of this shell hole, there’s nothing to stop the redoubt bullets hitting us in the back. Look at that,” he concluded, nodding upward to where a bullet had smacked noisily into the mud above their heads as they squatted in the hole.
The two commenced wearily to cut out with their trenching tools a couple of niches in the sides of the crater which would give them protection from the flank and rear bullets. They made reasonably secure cover and then stayed to watch a hurricane bombardment that was developing on the redoubt. “Goo on the guns,” said Pug joyfully. “That’s the talk; smack ’em about.”
The gunners “smacked ’em about” with fifteen savage minutes’ deluge of light and heavy shells, blotting out the redoubt in a whirlwind of fire-flashes, belching smoke clouds and dust haze. Then suddenly the tempest ceased to play there, lifted and shifted and fell roaring in a wall of fire and steel beyond the low slope which the redoubt crowned.
With past knowledge of what the lift and the further barrage meant the two men in the shell-pit turned and craned their necks and looked out along the line.
“There they go,” said Pug suddenly, and “Attacking round a half-circle,” said Kentucky. The British line was curved in a horse-shoe shape about the redoubt and the two being out near one of the points could look back and watch clearly the infantry attack launching from the center and half-way round the sides of the horse-shoe. They saw the khaki figures running heavily, scrambling round and through the scattered shell holes, and presently, as a crackle of rifle fire rose and rose and swelled to a sullen roar with the quick, rhythmic clatter of machine guns beating through it, they saw also the figures stumbling and falling, the line thinning and shredding out and wasting away under the withering fire.