I pointed out the ones my battery was going to demolish and his big white teeth were exposed in another grin, as he nodded approvingly, and walked off.
That same afternoon my gun leveled the buildings assigned to me for demolishment and knowing beyond all shadow of a doubt that they were filled with men and machine guns, I watched through the glasses to see the gray-clad inmates popping out of the doors and windows. Judge of my astonishment! Not a solitary soul left the building my gun had destroyed. I watched each one of them in turn and in turn was awarded nothing for my pains. From others, however, hundreds of men rushed and as they scurried away our guns shrapneled them, dropping them by the score.
A sort of a subconscious connection between my conversation with the Algerian and the effect of my gun fire found lodging in the back of my head, but it was not until later that it became a direct consciousness. Another thing that set me thinking was what seemed to me to be an undue familiarity between this Algerian trooper and our farmer; he had the entree of the house, apparently could go and come as he pleased, drinking coffee with the inmates, sleeping there nights and making himself generally at home. I didn't think much of it at the time, but later events made these trivialities very significant indeed.
The bombardment was now commencing to have its effect on me, and McLean and I were both tired out; we were dead beat and looked around for a quiet spot where we could rest. Billy McLean was my especial pal ever since I had set foot in France.
"Here is what the doctor ordered," he said, as we went off down the hedge a bit and came to a little opening in the bush into which we both crawled. It requires no effort for a man who has been sustaining the sound, shock and work of a bombardment, to fall asleep anywhere, any time, and we were soon Murphyized, as Mac expressed it.
The rain now commenced falling heavily and in the midst of our slumbers, an orderly happened along and woke me up. I gave Mac a shove and he too woke up. We were drenched and made for the barn. We found the Old Man there with a lantern and told him we were going up in the loft, but he scowled and said we were not to go. "To hell with you!"—and up we went, finding five or six of the boys there taking advantage of the lull to snatch an hour's sleep. We quickly followed suit, getting hold of some straw and grain bags for a bed, and resumed our interrupted slumbers.
In the midst of our dreams "S.O.S. Stand to!" was ordered, but we did not hear. One of our fellows, as we later learned, came running up to the farmhouse and asked the farmer if he had seen any of our men.
"No," he scowled, "there are none here."
When we had our sleep out we made for the guns. It did not take us long to see that a pretty thorough strafing had been going on, yet so dead beat to the utter exhaustion point were we, that we had failed to hear them.
"Where the hell were you fellows?" asked one.