CHAPTER XVI
A FLAG OF TRUCE
Every afternoon, at four o’clock sometimes, sometimes at five o’clock, sometimes later even, we had our evening battle. The morning rounds completed, the colonel returned to Headquarters, where I saw no more of him for an hour or two. That time was my own, when I crawled under the wretched awning of my funk-hole, and settled down to grill through the heat of the day. By three or four o’clock invariably the colonel came to life again, arriving in the open to stretch and collect periscope and glasses. Then he would call out, “Come on, Lake!” and tread again the little path up the hill to the valley head.
Sometimes we took the left-hand trenches, where there was an observing station in Sands’s charge; but more often at the B Battery observing station the fight had birth.
Every evening we asked for trouble, put in a round here and a round there until we got it, and with little enough need it seemed; but maybe the army would have lost hope had nothing like this happened. For through much of the day—when even the flies fell exhausted into the tea—the snipers of either army lost heart to snipe, and the gunners lay by their guns wondering how it was they could not die. But as the sun climbed down his ladder, and a flagging breeze puffed off the sea, we rose again to our feet, picked up periscopes and telephones, and goaded ourselves into another evening hate.
At this time—late spring or early summer—the Turkish army had lately spent a mighty effort to drive us into the sea. Purging the beach of our presence, they called it in their newspapers. The old knowledge was reproven—hopeless to attack well-armed, well-entrenched troops. At the end of several fierce hours the attempt was spent, and the enemy reeled to his trenches leaving on a few acres of ground between three and four thousand dead. Everywhere you looked the dead men lay, and hours later you might see an arm move or a leg rise, where some poor fellow cried on Death not to delay. In time the breath of decay searched you out the length of Shrapnel Valley, and when the wind veered in the trenches it caught you by the throat. I marvelled how the men there got down their dinners.
One evening, on the heels of the big attack, we had a pretty little battle. The colonel observed from B Battery station, and I carried orders to the telephonist a few yards away.
The major had not turned up, and Mr. Hay was in charge. B Battery was dusting up “C” or “Collins Street” or one of the usual targets, and the other batteries banged away elsewhere with more than daily hate. A great many snipers were at work too on either side. We had woken up this afternoon.
The great heat of the day had passed, indeed there were one or two signs of evening. The sun was three parts of the way down the sky, and shadows started to grow at the bottom of every bush. The high noon haze was no more, and you could see with great clearness over all the desolate country. Our shells burst in sudden white clouds on the great hill in the distance; and here and here, did you know where to look, moved the puff of the enemy’s return fire. And nearer at hand, you could follow the Turkish trenches by the vicious, short-lived dust spurts of our bullets.
Where the colonel took his stand, they were tunnelling out a machine-gun position; and every few moments men came out of the earth with freshly filled sandbags on their shoulders. They crowded the narrow passage, blocking me every time I hurried to Mr. Hay or the telephonist.