“Anything special going on?” from the colonel.
“They’re making a great work of Lonesome Pine. They have been hard at it all the morning. Something ought to be done before it gets too strong.”
Out would come the colonel’s hand for the periscope. “Yes,” he would say, breaking off from a long look, “Lonesome Pine and the Jolly are too strong for my Liking, and too near. Something should be done right away. The places are little fortresses and stuck right under our nose.” He would look again and then turn round. “I suppose you know we knocked that gun out yesterday?”
“We claim that, sir; and I hear the New Zealanders say it was theirs.”
“You claim it, do you? What damned cheek! It’s ours right enough. They had it out in the open; you could see the gunners standing up to it breast high. We put a shell right on top of it, and left it on its side. It’s there now.” He would take another long look round the landscape.
“They’ve got a road over there; quite a thoroughfare, where mules and camels and hand-organs and such interesting things pass up and down all day. I’ll give them a bit of hurry up there some time. It’s quite a fashionable place, fountains and that sort of thing: probably they have afternoon tea there. A round or two would be just the thing.”
“You might plug one into the band.”
“Quite so. Quite so. By the way, we have been knocked down again. Five rounds per day is the limit now. I wonder why we troubled to come here? Soon we shall be told there is no more ammunition, then I shall have to throw my glasses at them, or hit them on the head with the periscope.” He would continue to stare into the glass. “I think I must put a round into that road to-day. I’ll do it on the way home: it will be dinner time then. They’ll be out in the open, and there will be a better chance of catching somebody. Besides, it will mean a spoilt dinner, if nothing else.”
They saluted, and we pushed on towards C Battery. It was on a bit of a rise called the Pimple; and a few more traverses and a few more turnings emptied us out on to it. A couple of guns were level with the trenches, and the others were a matter of two hundred yards farther back. The trench guns had good sandbagged overhead cover, and a sandbag screen before them. The country here was more open and less precipitous, and less miserable to live in, it struck me. The battery commander had built himself a good funk-hole—a square, fairly roomy place, where he passed the day when nothing important was on hand. He had much of an epicure’s soul, and, being a wise man, got what good living he was able. His dishes were ever more tempting than ours. The colonel knew it, and broke his journey there on many a scorching morn. For in his heart the colonel sighed for Melbourne’s fleshpots. “Yards is a poor housekeeper,” I have heard him say, sadly shaking his head. Such times the major would laugh. He was stout, with a wonderful complexion, which matched the D.S.O. ribbon on his coat.