We crawled together, and held a hurried conversation at the top of our voices, for the bombardment had now started in with violent intensity from our side, as well as from Fritz’s.
“We’ll have to move to the sap, with Niven ... bring ... runners ... you ... make ... dash for it.”
“How ... ’bout Townley?”
“’S’all right.”
Then we pulled ourselves together and went for it, stumbling along the trench, over heaped-up mounds of earth, past still forms that would never move again. On, on, running literally for our lives. At last we reached the saps. Two platoons were out there, crowded in a little trench a foot and a half wide, nowhere more than four feet deep. Some shrapnel burst above it, but it was the old front line, thirty yards in rear, on which the Germans were concentrating a fire in which no man could live long.
The runners, Major Ogilvie, Niven, and myself, and that amazing Sergeant-Major of ours, who would crack a joke with Charon, were all together in a few yards of trench.
Our fire ceased suddenly. It was zero hour. In defiance of danger Ogilvie stood up, perfectly erect, and watched what was going on. Our guns opened again, they had lifted to the enemy supports and lines of communication.
“They’re over!” we cried all together.
Machine-guns were rattling in a crescendo of sound that was like the noise of a rapid stream above the roar of a water-wheel. The enemy sent up rocket upon rocket—three’s, four’s, green and red. Niven, as plucky a boy as ever lived, watched eagerly. Then a perfect hail of shells began to fall. One could almost see our old trench change its form as one glanced at it. It was almost as light as day. Major Ogilvie was writing reports. One after another he sent out the runners to head-quarters, those runners every one of whom deserves the Victoria Cross. Some went never to return.
All at once two red rockets burst away forward, on the right, falling slowly, slowly to earth.