“Well, can you see anything? Can you see any special movement?”
There was no reply for a while. Then I heard: “No, sir, I can’t see anything particular.”
Sands was called into consultation, and his verdict, given in disinterested voice, bore out what the sergeant said. But all the while the fire from both sides was increasing. Bullets plumped time after time into our opposite bank, and a multitude of shells travelled forwards and backwards across the sky. I began to feel warlike. Rapid conversation went on between the officers; but as nothing further happened, excitement died a natural death. We were settling comfortably into our places again when a second message came along. “Enemy massing heavily on our right. Attack expected.”
This settled matters. The place buzzed like a beehive. Sands was appealed to again. “Can you see no movements at all from where you are?” “Absolutely nothing,” Sands answered in the blandest manner without turning round. A moment afterwards he called to me over his shoulder, “Climb up by the machine gun, Lake, and try to observe the next two shots. I can’t pick them up from here. I should try not to get killed if I were you. You probably will be up there.”
I did as he told me, and lay flat on my stomach beside the machine gun. There was absolutely no cover, so that I flattened out to the last inch. I looked across the wilderness of yesterday. Our bullets knocked up the dust along the Turkish line, and our shells broke in delicate white clouds about the sky. One thing I could not see, that was a living Turk. I had not much opportunity to look about, as I had to watch closely the square of ground on which one of our guns was trained. I saw the puff at last and called out the direction, and Sands answered he had picked it up too. The next shot Sands observed as well.
While I was flattened out there calculating how soon a bullet would come that way, a very young lieutenant walked over. “I say, keep down as much as you can,” he said, lifting up his face to me, “or you will draw fire on us.”
“You blighted ass, what am I doing now?” I thought. “Yes, sir,” I said.
The time was about four o’clock, and the men expected to be relieved by another company. In spite of the turn affairs had taken, the men made ready for departure, and quite soon the relieving company arrived and tried to find a way in. They, too, carried fixed bayonets and looked like business. The trench was quite choked up, and I took the hint and climbed into a funk-hole out of the way. Perhaps I was lucky. Officers of the old party were hunting their men out, and confusion was general, when a loud and dull explosion took place quite near, stones and a cloud of dust shot up—and then came silence. A percussion shell had come into the trench. The senior officer was beside me, and he craned his neck forward, and called out in a sharp voice to know who was hurt. “Forbes killed, sir, and two others hit.” “Get them away to the doctor, get them out at once: don’t block up the way!”
The soldiers pushed themselves against the walls, and the procession went by. The dead man came last. I peered from my funk-hole and looked him in the face. I do not think he was quite dead; but I heard someone say in a stage whisper his back was broken. His face was yellow, and his mouth a little open. Death had not stamped him with nobility.
Yet there was a moment when I forgot the trenches and instead saw another scene. Grey walls were there crossing purple moorland; and in the valley stood slated cottages about an aged church. From there at daybreak the labourers went abroad, and at even the herds came home; and ever there the old men dawdled, and women gossiped by their doors. Year by year the same faces looked on the same faces, but not again would one familiar face be seen.