“Thanks. I’ll report to Division.”
And that was all our Mr. Jameson saw of the fifty thousand very gallant gentlemen who stormed forward through our own gas, dribbling foot-balls, tooting hunting-horns, skirling bag-pipes and blowing mouth-organs—on the morning of September the 25th, nineteen-hundred and fifteen!
Gradually, the gun-fire died away; smoke cleared from the plain. Bare and silent, the dun sea stretched to the sky-line. From very far away, came a faint chattering of machine guns. A German balloon rose up; peered at things; went down again. Down the Hulluch road, a toy battery trotted noiselessly. Only the French “heavies” behind the Fosse, still clanged unceasing.
But the great slag-cone itself seethed with excited men.
Out from their burrows they came; down from their eyries; maps in their hands, telescopes under arm, binoculars dangling from their shoulders. Rumour hundred-wired, ran among them. Loos had fallen,—said rumour—Hulluch was ours, City Saint Élie, Haisnes, Douvrin!
“By God, we’ve broken them,” roared a fierce little Major of Garrison Artillery, “by God, we’ve broken them at last!” And he danced up there, on the gritty slag, none heeding.
“Look,” shouted the Captain of Sappers, “look! The Cavalry!” And moisture brimmed into his eyes, watching the squadrons wheeling into line on the grass-fields just below.
And always, high up, like monkeys among the telephone-posts, the three Frenchmen jabbered to their clanging guns—“Bon. Bon. Bien tiré. Magnifique. On les a, je vous dis. Oui. Oui. Oui. On les a!”
But Chips Bradley’s grandson, peering out over the empty plain, peering back towards Béthune—waiting, waiting, waiting, for the dust cloud on the road, the dust cloud that never came—thought of the words his Colonel had spoken the night before. And the heart in him was heavy, even in those early hours, with forebodings of disaster!