"You think the Germans are getting through this time?" asked the other.
"No, I don't think they'll get through. But, anyhow, I've a kind of presentiment that this is our last smoke together."
During the day they lay together, smoking and yarning. Hard by the artillery major was preparing busily for the attack everyone knew was to be delivered that evening. At length the day waned, the red disc of the sun silhouetted in sharp relief against the battered tower of Ypres Cathedral. Night fell, and at last the German guns belched a furious cannonade against the poor earthworks held by our fellows. When they had done their work the Prussian Guard poured out of their holes and mounds and stormed towards the British.
Until they were almost upon our lines the British guns were silent. Then, when the enemy were practically at hand-grips with those holding the advanced trenches, a terrible fusillade opened upon the Prussians. By some unfortunate mistake, however, the range had not been accurately calculated; our shrapnel was bursting too far behind the attacking enemy. There was but little time to think; immediate action was imperative. Desperate cases are cured only by desperate remedies. Either that little handful of men in the front trench must be sacrificed, or the enemy would burst through the British lines.
The major directing the artillery fire was in a terrible quandary, for among the men who would be sacrificed was his dear friend.
Yet he knew his duty as a soldier, and he did not hesitate. He directed the range of the batteries to be shortened until the shells were bursting over the trench, and his chum fell, pierced with bullets. That same evening the major himself was found—dead by his own hand, a revolver by his side. Corporal Glasgow was carried to a dressing-station with sixteen bullets from British shrapnel in his leg, and his friend of the cigarette episode had been shot through the brain. That terrible night furnished a long list of casualties for the British, but Ypres had been saved, and the road to Calais was still guarded by the thin khaki line.
VI—THE BRITISH SERGEANT'S UNCONSCIOUS FIGHT FOR LOVE
Lance-Corporal W. Bird, of the 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment, who was also wounded at Ypres, recounted the following incident to me. Its central figure is a sergeant of his own regiment, and it commences in those first vivid days of the war, when the Germans were swarming over the border. A company of ragged Chasseurs d'Afrique had burst through a village. Some limped and were blood-stained; all breathed heavily in great gasps, and they were plastered with mud and haggard for want of food and sleep.
"It's all up, Mother Vinot," shouted the corporal, a burly Alsatian, to a shivering old creature outside the village débit. "The Boches are upon us."