This thoughtful scheme was duly carried out about a week ago—with what results, of course, it is impossible to say: but from the way the hostile batteries woke up and retaliated, we gathered that something had been accomplished.
And so the days and weeks pass by—quickly on the whole, so quickly that we are already beginning to badger the adjutant with queries as to when we are likely to get leave. There are rumours, too, that the division is shortly going out "to rest." The infantry deserve it, for theirs is the hard part: daily I admire them more, every man of them from the humblest private who digs in the slushy trenches or stands on guard in a sap thirty yards or less from the enemy and quite possibly on top of a mine to their brigadier who conceals his V.C. and D.S.O. ribbons beneath a rubber suit and spends more of his time in the front line trenches than out of them.
But for us gunners it is different. We live in comfort and in perfect safety (unless our actual position is spotted and "strafed," in which case we merely withdraw our men until the enemy's allowance of ammunition is expended). Except possibly for our hard-worked telephonists we need no rest. Moreover, it would be heartbreaking to leave the position that we have made so cosy, so inconspicuous, and, we all believe, so strong.
We happen to be close to a main avenue of traffic. All sorts of people pass by—"brass hats" going up to inspect the line, R.E. wagons laden with every conceivable kind of trench store, mining officers caked in yellow clay returning after a strenuous tour of duty underground, a constant succession of small parties of infantry who are either "going in" or "coming out," ration carts, handcarts filled with things that look like iron plum-puddings but are really trench-mortar bombs and, occasionally, an ambulance. Infantry officers or men who happen to halt close by are generally invited to have a look at the gun-pits. More often than not some one of them recognises a friend or a relation in the battery: it must be remembered that we are a homogeneous division. If by chance we are firing when a party of infantry (unaccompanied by an officer) is passing, it invariably halts and watches the performances with huge interest and quite often with a shout or two of encouragement.
"Go it, boys, give 'em a bit more marmalade," I heard one ribald private yell out, when to his joy he heard the order, "Two rounds battery fire one second." When the guns had flashed and roared in their sequence, and the shells had gone rumbling away towards the distant lines, he picked up his burden, hitched his rifle more comfortably across his shoulders, and went upon his way, remarking, with a pleasant admixture of oaths—
"That'll give 'em something to think about for a while."
This, on a minor scale, is an example of the great principle of infantry and artillery co-operation. I can picture that same private rejoining his platoon in the trenches and saying to his "batty"—[9]
[9] = pal or friend.
"Look you, Trevor, as I was coming up the road now just, I see a battery of our fellows givin' them —— Hell."
And his friend would answer perhaps—