Come down, Herr Taube, come down where we can have a shot at you! Get in the game! You can see better at the altitude of the British airmen! But Herr Taube always stays high—the Br’er Fox of the air. Of course, it was not so exciting as the pictures that artists draw, but it was real.
Every kind of shell was being fired, low and high velocity, small and large calibre. One-two-three-four in quick succession as the roll of a drum, four German shells burst in line up in the region where we have made ourselves masters of the German trench. British shells responded.
“Ours again!”
But I had already ducked before I spoke, as you might if a pellet of steel weighing a couple of hundred pounds, going at the rate of a thousand yards a second or more, passed within a few yards of your head—ducked to find myself looking into the face of a soldier, who was smiling. The smile was not scornful, but it was at least amused at the expense of the sightseer, who had dodged one of our own shells. In addition to the respirators in case of a possible gas attack, supplied by that staff officer with a twinkle in his eye, we needed a steel rod fastened to the back of our necks and running down our spinal columns in order to preserve our dignity.
We were witnessing what is called the “artillery preparation for an infantry attack,” which was to try to recover that two hundred yards of trench from the British. Only the Germans did not limit their attention to the lost trench alone. It was hottest there around the bend of our line, from our view-point; for there they must maul the trench into formless débris and cut the barbed wire in front of it before the charge was made.
“They touch up all the trenches in the neighbourhood to keep us guessing,” said the officer, “before they make their final concentration. So it’s pretty thick around this part.”
“Which might include the communication trench?”
“Certainly. This makes a good line shot. No doubt they will spare us a few when they think it is our turn. We do the same thing. So it goes.”
From the variety of screams of big shells and little shells and screams harrowingly close and reassuringly high, which were indicated as ours, one was warranted in suggesting that the British were doing considerable artillery preparation themselves.
“We must give them as good as they send—and more.”