“A halt was called and men were detailed to pick up bivouac-sheets and petrol-tins of water. The already heavy-laden troops moved on again more slowly with their increased burden, along slippery wooden tracks laid across a field of mud. Another halt. An officer appeared, dripping with moisture, accompanied by guides who took charge of the companies and allotted them their area in which to bivouac.
“To-morrow was zero day, not for the 4th Battalion, but for some one else. If some one else failed, then the Grenadiers would have to put matters straight; that is to say, the Grenadiers
were in reserve. The Intelligence Officer gave one last look at the inky darkness, and going down on hands and knees crawled into a long, low-arched dug-out. Sleeping men sprawled across the floor, while at the farther end a solitary candle burned. Picking his way across the recumbent figures he saw the Commanding Officer lying on his back, his head propped against a pack, silently smoking a cigarette and thinking. The Intelligence Officer lay down by his side, and, watching the Adjutant writing orders and speaking down a telephone, fell into a fitful sleep.
“Zero hour for some one else left him cold, unmoved. The accustomed environment of war and great fatigue dull the sensibility of man. The steady roar of countless guns was a pleasing murmur as of rippling water in his sleepy brain.
“A ray of sunlight struggled through the narrow entrance of the dug-out, and the sleeping mass of humanity near the door stirred uneasily. The Intelligence Officer shivered, and, cautiously rising into a stooping posture, crawled out into the open air. The sun was trying to pierce a passage through the heavy ground-mist. The troops were cooking their breakfast and beating their chests with a flapping motion to restore the circulation in their half-frozen limbs.
“On a modern battlefield, lines of wooden ‘duckboards’ run like arteries across the trackless waste towards the front. Up the arteries flow fresh men, new blood, human forms complete; food to support life, ammunition to destroy it. Down the arteries flow ghosts of what yesterday were men, with tissues torn, and muscles rent;
gibbering prisoners and men who have been spared to be shattered another day.
“An artery passed the dug-out door. The Intelligence Officer observed the circulation to and from the battlefield, and speculated on the fate of the tide going up, watching the expression on the faces of the advancing and receding groups. The men lazily watched the passing tide, exchanging jokes with friends going either way. Prisoners alone excited interest, but not sufficient to make men move more than a few yards from where they stood.
“French gunners in a wood near by ran hotfoot to see each band of prisoners pass, but our men with British phlegm stayed where they stood, and eyed the foe with casual glance. The passing wounded drew no expression of pity from the onlookers, nor did the fate of the ingoing tide even raise a questioning expression on their faces. This was the last spot where selfishness still reigned supreme—the fringe of the battle. Death and danger were not sufficiently close to draw out the best in man; he behaved as he did in civil life—each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
“The men who marched up the endless ribbon to the front looked just like other men, and anxiety for their own safety left no trace in their expression. They might have been the crowd that streams through the factory gates in the early morning. The outgoing men were different. They hastened by and looked neither to the left nor right. They felt that fate had been too good to them and that it might change