Servants of the Guns

by Jeffery E. Jeffery

Four guns were in position with their wagons beside them. The remnants of the detachments crouched behind the shields. Piles of empty cartridge-cases and little mounds of turf behind the trails testified that these four guns, at least, had been well served. But the others! One was still limbered up: evidently a shell had burst immediately in front of it. Its men and horses were heaped up round it almost as though they were tin soldiers which a child had swept together on the floor. The remaining gun pointed backward down the hill, forlorn and desolate.

In the distance, for miles and miles, the noise of battle crashed and thundered in the air. But here it seemed some magic spell was cast, and everything was still and silent as the grave.

Sick at heart, Tony contemplated the scene of carnage and destruction for one brief moment. Then he made his way towards the only officer whom he could see, and from him learnt exactly what had happened.

The Major commanding the battery, it appeared, deceived first by the map and then by the fog, had halted his whole battery where he imagined that it was hidden from view. But as soon as the mist had cleared away he found that it was exposed to the fire of the hostile artillery at a range of little more than a mile. The battery had been caught by a hail of shrapnel before it could get into action. Only this one officer remained, and there were but just enough men to work the four guns that were in position. Ammunition, too, was getting very short.

Tony looked at his watch. It was only eight o'clock. From his vague idea of the general plan of battle he knew that the decisive attack would eventually sweep forward over the hill on which he stood. But how soon?

At any moment the enemy might launch a counter-attack and engulf his battery. Its position could hardly have been worse. Owing to the flat top of the hill nothing could be seen from the guns except the three hundred yards immediately in front of them and the high ground a mile away on which the enemy's artillery was posted. The intervening space was hidden. Yet it was impossible to move. Any attempt to go forward to where they could see, or backward to where they would be safe, would be greeted, Tony knew well enough, with a burst of fire which would mean annihilation. Besides, he remembered the stampeding wagon line. The battery was without horses, immobile. To wait patiently for succour was its only hope.

Having ascertained that a man had been posted out in front to give warning of an attack, Tony sat down to await developments with philosophic calm. The fact that he had no right to be there at all, but that his place was with the General, did not concern him in the slightest. It had always been his ambition "to fight a battery in the real thing," as he would himself have phrased it, and he foresaw that he was about to do so with a vengeance. He was distressed by the havoc that he saw, but in all other respects he was content.

For hours nothing happened. The enemy evidently considered that the battery was effectually silenced, and did not deign to waste further ammunition upon it. Then, when Tony had almost fallen asleep, the sentry at the forward crest semaphored in a message——

"Long thick line of infantry advancing: will reach foot of hill in about five minutes. Supports behind." Almost at the same moment an orderly whom Tony recognised as belonging to his General's staff arrived from the rear. Tony seized upon him eagerly.

"Where have you come from?" he demanded.