"Go ahead, President," said Lloyd grimly. "We have got to get there somehow."
We got there, somehow.
Once we ran through the ill-smelling shell-cloud of a coal-box that burst a few yards in front of us, and twigs from the trees fell over the car as the shells screamed above, but we dodged on, past shell-holes and around barricades, untouched.
Pulling up, I saw Nicholson's car behind us, the driver grinning.
"I thought if it was good enough for you it was good enough for me," he said. "But I'm hanged if I thought anyone could get over that road and not be hit. It's the first time I've been up here."
I introduced him to my tiny Potijze dug-out, which he thought "smelled horrid." He was inclined to a preference for the open air until a great howitzer-shell lit fifty feet away, pieces from it knocking over some of the wall of the ruined house behind which the dug-out had been made. As he joined me in the cramped space below ground another Black Maria burst across the road from us, making the earth tremble and showering splinters on the roof of our shelter.
Fortunately for those whose work took them over the roads that morning the sky was leaden and rain fell at intervals, rendering German aeroplane observation impossible. Had a Hun airman caught sight of the traffic-filled road over which we had come the enemy gunners might have effectually closed it to traffic.
As we waited at Potijze the shells from the British guns behind us seemed to fill the air. Gradually the fire of the German howitzers concentrated on the trench-line in front of us, and the Boche gunners burst shrapnel all about the fields, searching erratically for the English batteries.
Budworth, of the artillery, was very much upset that morning by the target selected by one of the British howitzers.
Our divisional batteries H, I, and the Warwickshire Territorial Battery, were doing fine work and splendid execution.