"What are the doings?" I asked.
"The word 'as been passed along that a German observation balloon is going up over Lens an' we're goin' to shell it," said Bill.
"I can't see the blurry thing nohow," he added.
I looked towards Lens, and saw the town pencilled reddish in the morning light with several defiant chimney stacks standing in air. One of these was smoking, which showed that the enemy was still working it.
I saw the balloon rise over the town. It was a massive banana-like construction with ends pointing downwards, and it climbed slowly up the heavens. At that moment our gunners greeted it with a salvo of shrapnel and struck it, as far as I could judge.
It wriggled for a moment, like a big feather caught in a drift of air, then disappeared with startling suddenness.
"A neat shot," I said to Bill, who was now engaged on the task of looking for the snappy maxim shrew that tapped impatiently on the sandbagged parapet.
"I think it's up there," he said, pointing to the crest where three or four red-tiled houses snuggled in the cover of a spinney. "It's in one of them big 'ouses, bet yer. If I find it I'll get the artillery to blow the place to blazes!" he concluded, with an air of finality.
I went back to the dressing-station and found the men on guard in a state of tense excitement. They had seen a German cross the street two hundred yards up, and a red-haired youth, Ginger Turley, who had fired at the man, vowed that he had hit him.
"I saw 'im fall," said Ginger. "Then 'e crawled into a 'ouse on 'ands and knees."