“Yet—pretty!” R—— and I exclaimed together.
L—— took a sliver off his coat and offered it to us as a souvenir. He did not know that he had said “Pretty!” or R—— that he had said “A black business!” several times that afternoon; nor did I know that I had exclaimed “For the love of Mike!” Psychologists take notice; and golfers are reminded that their favourite expletives when they foozle will come perfectly natural to them when the Germans are “strafing.” Then another nine-inch, when we were out of the gallery in front of the warrens. My companions happened to be near a dugout. They did not go in tandem, but abreast. It was a “dead heat.” All that I could see in the way of cover was a wall of sandbags, which looked about as comforting as tissue paper in such a crisis.
At least, one faintly realised what it meant to be in the support trenches, where the men were still huddled in their caves. They never get a shot at the enemy or a chance to throw a bomb, unless they are sent forward to assist the front trenches in resisting an attack. It is for this purpose that they are kept within easy reach of the front trenches. They are like the prisoner tied to a chair-back, facing a gun.
“Yes, this was pretty heavy shell-fire,” said an officer, who ought to know. “Not so bad as on the trenches which the infantry are to attack—that is the first degree. You might call this the second.”
It was heavy enough to keep any writer from being bored. The second degree will do. We will leave the first till another time.
Later, when we were walking along a paved road, I heard what seemed the siren call of another nine-inch. Once, in another war, I had been on a paved road when—well, I did not care to be on this one if a nine-inch hit it and turned fragments of paving-stones into projectiles. An effort to “run out the bunt”—Cæsar’s ghost! It was one of our own shells! Nerves! Shame! Two stretcher-bearers with a wounded man looked up in surprise, wondering what kind of a hide-and-seek game we were playing. They made a picture of imperturbability of the kind that is a cure for nerves under fire. If the other fellow is not scared it does not do for you to be scared.
“Did you get any shells in your neighbourhood?” we asked the chauffeur—also British and imperturbable—whom we found waiting at a clearing station for wounded.
“Yes, sir, I saw several, but none hit the car.”
As we came to the first cross-roads in that dead land back of the trenches which was still being shelled by shrapnel, though not another car was in sight and ours had no business there (as we were told afterward), that chauffeur, as he slowed up before turning, held out his hand from habit as he would have done in Piccadilly.
Two or three days later things were normal along the front again, with Mr. Atkins still stuffing himself with marmalade in that two hundred yards of trench.