“The enemy seems to have sighted our dust, sir. His shrapnel is following up pretty closely. Would you advise me to put my men under cover, or carry on?”
The captain hesitated. This was rather outside his sphere of influence. But the boyishness of the other officer asked for help.
“My advice is to put your men into that ditch and keep them there until the strafe is over.” Some shrapnel bullets whipped the sun-baked road as he spoke.
“Very good, sir.”
The men sat in the ditch, with their packs against the bank, and wiped the sweat off their faces. They looked tired and dispirited, but not alarmed.
In the fields behind them—our way—the 4.2's (four—point-twos) were busy plugging holes in the grass and flowers, rather deep holes, from which white smoke-clouds rose after explosive noises.
“With a little careful strategy we might get through,” said the captain. “There's a general waiting for us, and I have noticed that generals are impatient fellows. Let's try our luck.”
We walked across the wild flowers, past the sheep, who only raised their heads in meek surprise when shells came with a shrill, intensifying snarl and burrowed up the earth about them. I noticed how loudly and sweetly the larks were singing up in the blue. Several horses lay dead, newly killed, with blood oozing about them, and their entrails smoking. We made a half-loop around them and then struck straight for the chateau which was the brigade headquarters. Neither of us spoke now. We were thoughtful, calculating the chance of getting to that red-brick house between the shells. It was just dependent on the coincidence of time and place.
Three men jumped up from a ditch below a brown wall round the chateau garden and ran hard for the gateway. A shell had pitched quite close to them. One man laughed as though at a grotesque joke, and fell as he reached the courtyard. Smoke was rising from the outhouses, and there was a clatter of tiles and timbers, after an explosive crash.
“It rather looks,” said my companion, “as though the Germans knew there is a party on in that charming house.”