As we stood on the hill-crest and talked to the French officer a furious cannonade was going on around us. In our rear, hidden behind hills, three different French batteries were in intermittent action, and somewhere off beyond the valley in front lay the hidden German batteries which were returning their fire. Shells from both sides passed back and forth over our heads and the German shells banged and burst a thousand yards behind our backs.
The guns beside us were silent. They had, undetected, held their present position for a whole day. They watched the two lines in the valley as intently as these lines watched each other, for in front of us was one of those crucial points against which attacks are frequently launched by the enemy. The batteries beside which we stood waited hour after hour for that sudden critical moment when the Germans should attempt to launch any attack between the lines. These nine guns could together fire two hundred rounds a minute, which means seventy thousand shrapnel bullets. These batteries were connected by telephone with the trenches a mile in front, and also with various observation points from which the results of their fire could be accurately judged and cross-checked.
A few hundred yards to our right in plain view across the open fields was the little village of Auchonvillers. Suddenly a great German shell burst with an earth-shaking shock in the open fields about three hundred yards behind it, throwing up a great cloud of inky black smoke nearly as large as a city block. It made a crater more than a hundred feet in circumference. The French officers said that it was either a twelve-inch or an “eleven-point-two” and prophesied that a second and more accurate shot would soon follow and strike the village itself. We watched intently and some minutes later a great shell did fall squarely into the little hamlet. Again a great cloud of jet black smoke shot up into the air, but this time it was mixed with bits of houses and fragments of earth. The smoke drifted off slowly, and reluctantly floated away on the wind until some minutes later we were able to discern the town as it emerged from the cloud of dust, showing a great gap in its sky-line.
We had lunch in Doullens with the officers of Mr. Norton’s train.
At one point in the front line we heard this story relative to barbed-wire entanglements. A week ago a lieutenant and several of his men ventured forth at night and succeeded in crawling unobserved under the entanglements. Reaching the German trenches they leapt in among their enemies and did much execution; but becoming too enthusiastic, they overstayed their leave, so that none of them ever returned. The Germans, not wishing to be again surprised in such a disagreeable manner, on the next dark night slipped out of their trenches and hung a great quantity of cowbells upon the lower strands of their wire entanglements. Before many nights had passed another party of daring Frenchmen again essayed to crawl to the German trenches but, ringing up the cowbells, were all killed in the resulting fusillade.
Not content to leave the matter as it stood, an intrepid Frenchman crept out on the following night, unwinding a ball of twine as he advanced. He succeeded in attaching the end of this to a cowbell without making any noise to betray his presence. He then made his way safely back to his own trenches and from their shelter vigorously pulled the string. A most ungodly clank and clatter resulted, wrecking the stillness of the night. This aroused the Teutons and led them into a solid hour of furious but futile shooting. The string was similarly pulled on several succeeding occasions and always produced the desired result of uproar and shooting, until it was finally severed by a bullet.
Our party arrived in Hesdin at half-past six this evening. It was raining furiously and the condition of the roads and the obscurity of the night made it extremely hazardous to proceed farther. The village was packed with British transports and we could find only one vacant bed in the whole place. Two of us slept in that and the other two on stretchers in the ambulance.