I sensed that the captain expected a busy evening and looked forward with no joy to possible interference from a questioning visitor, so I chose the tree.
"All right," he said, "you've got helmet and gas masks, I see. Now how's your watch? Take the right time off mine. We have just synchronised ours with headquarters. Zero is one o'clock. You had better start now."
He called for an orderly with a German name, and the two of us left. Before I was out of the room, the captain had returned to his mathematics and was figuring out the latest range variations and making allowances for latest developments in wind, temperature and barometer. The orderly with the German name and I plunged again into the trees and brought up shortly on the edge of a group of men who were standing in the dark near a large tree trunk. I could hear several other men and some stamping horses off to one side.
The party at the foot of the tree was composed of observers, signal linemen and runners. All of them were enlisted men. I inquired who were to be my comrades in the tree top and three presented themselves. One said his name was Pat Guahn, the second gave his as Peter Griffin and the third acknowledged Mike Stanton. I introduced myself and Griffin said, "I see we are all from the same part of Italy."
At twenty minutes to one, we started up the tree, mounting by rudely constructed ladders that led from one to the other of the four crudely fashioned platforms. We reached the top breathless and with no false impressions about the stability of our swaying perch. The tree seemed to be the tallest in the forest and nothing interfered with our forward view. The platform was a bit shaky and Guahn put my thoughts to words and music by softly singing—
"Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top,
When the shell comes the runners all flop,
When the shell busts, good-bye to our station,
We're up in a tree, bound for damnation."
The compass gives us north and we locate in the forward darkness an approximate sweep of the front lines. Guahn is looking for the flash of a certain German gun and it will be his duty to keep his eyes trained through the fork of a certain marked twig within arm's reach.
"If she speaks, we want to know it," Guahn says; "I can see her from here when she flashes and there's another man who can see her from another place. You see we get an intersection of angles on her and then we know where she is just as though she had sent her address. Two minutes later we drop a card on her and keep her warm."
"Is that that gun from Russia we heard about?" Griffin asks.
"No," answers Guahn, "we are not looking for her from that station. Besides, she isn't Russian. She was made by the British, used by the Russians, captured by the Germans and in turn is used by them against Americans. We have found pieces of her shell and they all have an English trade mark on them. She fires big eight inch stuff."