It was during these days at O—— that Talbot discovered Johnson. Johnson was one of his orderlies. Although it did not lie in the path of his duty, he took the greatest delight in doing all sorts of little odd jobs for Talbot. So unobtrusive he was about it all, that for some time Talbot hardly noticed that some one was trying to make him comfortable. When he did, by mutual agreement Johnson became his servant and faithful follower through everything. The man was perfectly casual and apparently unaffected by the heaviest shell-fire. It is absurd to say that a man "doesn't mind shell-fire." Every one dislikes it, and gets nervous under it. The man who "doesn't mind it" is the man who fights his nervousness and gets such control of himself that he is able to appear as if he were unaffected. Between "not minding it" and "appearing not to mind it" lie hard-won moral battles, increased strength of character, and victory over fear. Johnson had accomplished this. He preserved an attitude of careless calm, and could walk down a road with shells bursting all around him with a sublime indifference that was inspiring. Between him and his officer sprang up an extraordinary and lasting affection.
The wretched night in the forge at last came to an end, and the next morning we looked around for more comfortable billets. We selected the cellar of a house in fairly good condition and prepared to move in, when we discovered that we were not the first to whom it had appealed. Two dead Germans still occupied the premises, and when we had disposed of the bodies, we took up our residence. Here we stayed, going out each day to find the best points from which to view No Man's Land, which lay in front of the village. With the aid of maps, we planned the best routes for the tanks to take when the battle should have begun. Not a detail was neglected.
Then something happened to break the monotony of life. Just back of the village one of our batteries was concealed in such a fashion that it was impossible to find it from an aeroplane. Yet every day, regularly, the battery was shelled. Every night under cover of the darkness, the position was changed, and the battery concealed as cleverly as before, but to no avail. The only solution was that some one behind our lines was in communication with the Germans, every day. Secrecy was increased. Guards were doubled to see that no one slipped through the lines. Signals were watched. The whole affair was baffling, and yet we could find no clue.
Just in front of the wood where the battery was concealed, stood an old farmhouse where a genial Frenchwoman lived and dispensed good cheer to us. She had none of the men of her own family nor any farmhands to help her, but kept up the farmwork all alone. Every day, usually in the middle of the morning, she went out to the fields behind her house and ploughed, with an old white horse drawing the plough. For some reason she never ploughed more than one or two furrows at a time, and when this was done, she drove the white horse back to the barn. One day, an officer noticed that a German plane hovered over the field while the woman was ploughing, and that when she went back to the house, the plane shot away. The next day the same thing happened. Later in the day, the battery received its daily reminder from the Boche gunners, as unerringly accurate as ever.
Here was a clue. The solution of the problem followed. The woman knew the position of the battery, and every day when she went out to plough, she drove the white horse up and down, making a furrow directly in front of the battery. When the men in the German plane saw the white horse, they flew overhead, took a photograph of the newly turned furrow, and turned the photograph over to their gunners. The rest was easy.
A TANK GOING OVER A TRENCH ON ITS WAY INTO ACTION[ToList]
The next day we missed three events which had become part of our daily life. The German plane no longer hovered in the air. Our battery, for the first time in weeks, spent a peaceful day. And in the field behind her house, a woman with an old white horse no longer made the earth ready for the sowing.