He steadied the telescope in time to see a gun butt smash in the door and the officer stride in. The German batteries opened with a crash. A charge was coming. But he had no eyes for the enemy. He felt, rather than saw, a gray-green wave with a crest of steel flow up from the German trenches and over the “dead man’s land.” And instinctively he shot orders into the transmitter at his lips.
“Two hundred metres.”
“One hundred and seventy-five metres—left.”
And as the little puffs of shrapnel began to blossom over the gray-green wave, his gaze swung back to the little cottage.
And then he forgot the Germans—forgot his comrades in the endangered trench—forgot war—everything. For a figure—a woman’s figure—struggling—fell past a window in the arms of a uniformed figure.
He thought a scream came to his ears. For one insane second he started down from his station: he must go; he was so close. She needed him. And then as his eyes fell on the struggle below he realized how far it was—how helpless he was. And——
But there was a way. And he began to snap orders into the transmitter.
“One thousand five hundred metres—eight degrees left.”
A puff rose on the highway running past his home.
“One thousand six hundred metres.”