He saw the lumbering German go plodding off down the lane, his rifle still over his shoulder, and waited until he disappeared into the gloom. Then he shouted down the stairway:
"Come up, boys, all clear!"
One by one the men filed up from below, each carrying his rifle and ammunition as well as a haversack filled with provisions, while the majority also had water-bottles, and all wore steel helmets. Presently they stood outside the entrance in the gathering dusk, a forlorn little band, fully conscious of the fact that they stood as it were alone in this veritable "No-Man's-Land", surrounded by a host of Germans. Indeed, as they stood there waiting for the order to move, they could hear voices here and there—the guttural tones of the Kaiser's soldiers—while from their right, in a south-westerly direction, there came the continuous rattle of machine-guns, the rolling sounds of volleys and of independent rifle-firing, and, smothering all these sounds at times, the racket of a heavy cannonade. Far away sounds seemed to be echoing—the sounds of British guns and British rifles and other weapons.
"And then?" asked Nobby, his tin hat a little on one side, his hairy person standing out conspicuous from amongst the others in spite of the semi-darkness. "Over there," and he jerked a thumb towards the fighting-line, "there's ructions, and round about there's Huns, and there'll be Fritzes here and there and everywhere between us and the battle-line. Young Bill, you've got somethin' to face! What's the word?"
"Aye, what's the word?" others asked.
"March! Not a sound! Let no one answer if they challenge. But wait, we'll form up into column of twos, and I'll post a man on either flank of the column whose job it will be to tackle any inquisitive German. No shots to be fired, boys! Butt-ends!"
"Ah! butt-ends! I'll butt-end Fritz if he comes near me!" growled Nobby, his grin gone for a moment, looking, what indeed he was, a formidable fellow, as he swung his rifle-butt forward from the sling which was over his shoulder. "If Fritz comes between me and liberty—well, it'll be Fritz's fault. I've done 'em in before now, young Bill, and I'll do in a few more before this journey's finished."
"March!" Bill put himself at the head of the little column and trudged forward, first a few steps down the lane and then out through a gap which led from it towards the south-west. Right away, far on their right, he could distinguish a huge dull mass, which common sense and his knowledge of the geography of those parts told him must be the Butte of Warlencourt. Farther along, a little to the right of it, would lie the Albert-Bapaume road, the road which led to safety, and along that again, in the direction of Albert, on either side, a country decimated and torn to shreds by the fighting in 1916. There the Somme battles were bitterly contested, and for miles on either hand, where once had been a fair land dotted with pleasant villages, was now, as he knew from frequent observation, a blasted, battered rolling plain of mud and grass, and grass and mud and shell-holes interspersed with fragments of smashed villages. Here and there, perhaps as much as four feet of a wall remaining, elsewhere the base of some ancient church, a factory in another part crumbling to dust, its machinery rusting—rotten with exposure.
There would be derelict British tanks, too, turned on their sides, burst by interior explosion, and far and wide, here and there in groups—as in the case of the graves of those gallant Australians who captured Pozières—stood pathetic little crosses, beneath which rested all that remained of men who had gallantly fought for the empire. You who live secure in old England, and find it almost impossible to imagine such conditions, take the word of those who have seen. Conjure up in your mind's eye this blasted country, and recollect that there, on the fields they conquered, lie men who died for you, that you and England might survive the tyranny of Prussia.
But enough of such things. Bill knew every step of the way, for he had driven it and walked it on many an occasion.