He nods. "It will be attended to when we come back. I have their number."
Of course Kat has their number. He knows all about every leg of goose within a radius of fifteen miles.
The lorries arrive at the artillery lines. The gun-emplacements are camouflaged with bushes against aerial observation, and look like a kind of military Feast of the Tabernacles. These branches might seem gay and cheerful were not cannon embowered there.
The air becomes acrid with the smoke of the guns and the fog. The fumes of powder taste bitter on the tongue. The roar of the guns makes our lorry stagger, the reverberation rolls raging away to the rear, everything quakes. Our faces change imperceptibly. We are not, indeed, in the front-line, but only in the reserves, yet in every face can be read: This is the Front, now we are within its embrace.
It is not fear. Men who have been up as often as we have become thick skinned. Only the young recruits are agitated. Kat explains to them: "That was a twelve-inch. You hear the explosion first and afterwards comes the sound of the gun."
But the hollow sound of the firing does not reach us. It is swallowed up in the general murmur of the front. Kat listens: "There'll be a bombardment to-night."
We all listen. The front is restless. "The Tommies are firing already," says Kropp.
The shelling can be heard distinctly. It is the English batteries to the right of our section. They are beginning an hour too soon. According to us they start punctually at ten o'clock.
"What's got them?" says Müller, "their clocks must be fast."
"There'll be a bombardment, I tell you, I can feel it in my bones." Kat shrugs his shoulders.