With Haig on the Somme

by D. H. Parry

Oddly enough, above his head towered a gilded Calvary, untouched by our previous bombardment or the rain of bullets that sang through the air.

He found the rest of his company lining a low bank on which flowers were growing, and replying to some hot fire from the other side of the street, at the entrance to which a company of the kilted battalion which had gone over on their left was re-forming after suffering severely.

A good score of them were lying face downwards between what had been the first houses of the village, and he recognised the regiment by the green-and-yellow tartan.

There was no need to ask the reason of their pause, for eye and ear told him that machine-guns were trained along the street, into which no man might pass and live.

Somebody gave a tug at the skirt of Dennis's tunic as he knelt on one knee, looking sharply about him, and he saw that it was Private Harry Hawke, lying prone on his stomach, in the act of recharging his magazine, and there was an odd grin on the little Cockney's face.

"I know what you're thinkin' abart, sir," he said. "Them guns is yonder in the church. I got 'em set the moment we took cover 'ere. You and me and Tiddler could do it on our own, if you'd only say the word!"

Dennis had followed the directions of Hawke's dirty finger, and he smiled, for the thing had been in his own mind before the private spoke.

Sixty yards up the village street the ways forked, passing to right and left round what had once been a white-walled church with a square tower, and it was easy to see that, although our guns had played havoc with the sacred edifice and reduced it to a shapeless mass of rubbish, with the mere stump of the tower remaining, the enemy had turned it into a point of vantage.

The door at the foot of the tower had been built up by a great pile of sandbags, leaving a narrow embrasure in the corner—a mere slit like that of an exaggerated slot in a pillar box.

But that slit commanded the street, and from it came that continuous stream of lead which had stayed the Highlanders' attack. It was an isolated fortress, and, so far, none of our troops had reached it; but a few resolute men might accomplish much, and Dennis bent down.