Tack-tack-tack-tack came from the direction of the road. Even war-worn signallers retain their common sense.
"'Ark at that there [adjectived] machine-gun, it's 'ardly worth it;" they agreed and squelched off through the thick clay, grousing about the state of the country but perfectly indifferent to the deafening din around them.
Five minutes later we followed them and walked back, facing the flashes of our own guns, which were still firing steadily—just to make certain of having the last word with the Hun....
It was nearly nine o'clock when we at last clattered into the courtyard of our billet and slipped wearily off our horses. It had been a long day but an interesting one, for we had seen, at close quarters, a battery doing its normal job under the prevailing normal conditions. And very soon now our battery will be in that position, putting the last finishing touches to its education and doing that same job, I hope efficiently. Then, and not till then, will it really be a Battery in Being.
"IN THE LINE"
We are beginning now to regard ourselves as old stagers. We have been in action for nearly three months and in that period our education, in all the essential things, has advanced at a most surprising pace. Our most cherished illusions—culled from the newspapers for the most part—have been dissipated and replaced by the realities of this life. How often, I wonder, have we read that this is a war of attrition, or of artillery, or of finance, or of petrol! It is none of these things—at least not from our limited perspective. It is rather, to us, a war of mud, of paper (so many reams of it that the battery clerk's head buzzes and he cannot sleep at night for thinking of the various "returns" that he must render to headquarters by 9 a.m. on the following day), of routine, and, above all, of marauding.
Wherefore we have adapted ourselves to circumstances. We have learnt that mud in itself is harmless and, since it is impossible to avoid, not worth noticing at any time; that unpunctuality in the submitting of any report or return demanded (however senseless) leads to far more unpleasantness from high quarters than any other sin one may commit; that routine is an irksome fetish of the Powers, but that it makes each day so like its predecessor that the weeks slip by and one forgets the date and almost the month. Lastly, we have learnt that the way to get things is to find them lying about; that while it is possible to indent for material, it is also possible to collect it if one takes the trouble. Timber, for instance, is required for building gun-pits, so are steel girders and brick rubble and brushwood. Well, do not the winds that shriek across this flat country blow down trees sometimes? Is there not a derelict railway station less than a mile away, and are not piles of rubble placed along the roadsides for mending purposes? It is pleasant, too, to have a real door to one's dug-out instead of a hanging corn sack: there is more than one partially ruined cottage near at hand. We are beyond the borderland of civilisation here; We have left our scruples behind us, for we know that if we refrain from taking those rails, those doors and window frames, those stout oak beams, some one else will have them shortly.
Circumstances, too, have brought it home to us that this war is not so "stationary" as we imagined. The relative positions of the two opposing armies remain the same, weary month after weary month. But the positions of the units composing them do not. We, for example, soon after our arrival in the country were sent up to be attached for instruction to a battery which was in action. It was explained to us that we would eventually "take over" from that battery when its division went out to rest. We were at pains, therefore, to acquire all the knowledge we could in the time. The subalterns learnt the "zone" which they would have to watch and fire over—every yard of it. The sergeants mastered the particular system of angles, "registrations," etc., in use; the signallers knew the run of their wires and understood the working of the circuit; the gun detachments, as a result of many hours of patient sand-bag filling and building, had begun to regard the place as their future home which it was meet to make as strong and (afterwards only) as comfortable as possible. And I, as the battery commander, besides being fairly confident of being able to "carry on," had noted, with satisfaction, it being then midwinter, that there was a fireplace in what would be my room.
But did we "take over" this position? Not we! Three days before the relief was due to take place we were sent off to another battery about which we knew nothing whatever and took over from it in a hurry and a muddle. Which strange procedure may be accounted for in one of two ways—as having been done expressly with a view to training us in dealing with an unexpected situation or, more simply, as merely "Dam bad staff work." We will leave it at that.