"They're bombing up ahead. He has just been hit." As we drew aside to make room for him to pass, once more the civilian realized his helplessness and unimportance. One soldier was worth ten Prime Ministers in that place. We were as conspicuously mal à propos as an outsider at a bank directors' meeting or in a football scrimmage. The officer politely reminded us of the necessity of elbow room in the narrow quarters for the bombers, who were hidden from view by the zigzag traverses, and I was not sorry, though perhaps my companions were. If so, they did not say so, not being talkative men. We were not going to see the two hundred yards of captured trench that were beyond the bombing action, after all. Oh, the twinkle in that staff officer's eye!
"A Boche gas shell!" we were told, as we passed an informal excavation in the communication trench on our way back. "Asphyxiating effect. No time to put on respirators when one explodes. Laid out half a dozen men like fish, gasping for air, but they will recover."
"The Boches want us to hurry!" exclaimed L———.
They were giving the communication trench a turn at "strafing," now, and shells were urgently dropping behind us. There was no use trying to respond to one's natural inclination to run away from the pursuing shower when you had to squeeze past soldiers as you went.
"But look at what we are going into! This is like beating up grouse to the guns, and we are the birds! I am wondering if I like it."
We could tell what had happened in our absence in the support trench by the litter of branches and leaves and by the excavations made by shells. It was still happening, too. Another nine-inch, with your only view of surroundings the wall of earth which you hugged. Crash—and safe again!
"Pretty!" L——— said, smiling. He was referring to the cloud of black smoke from the burst. Pretty is a favourite word of his. I find that men use habitual exclamations on such occasions. R———, also smiling, had said, "A black business, this!" a favourite expression with him.
"Yes—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 dug-out. 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 realized 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.