‘During these schemes you must all of you force yourselves to imagine that there is a real enemy opposed to you. The Boche is no fool: he’s got guns, and he knows how to use them. If you show up on crest lines with a whole battery staff at your heels, he’ll have the place “registered,” and he’ll smash your show to bits before you ever get your guns into action at all. Think where he is likely to be, think what he’s likely to be doing, don’t expose yourselves unless you must, and above all, get a move on.’
It was a delightful bivouac. We were on the sheltered side of a little hill, looking south into a wooded valley. Nightingales sang to us as we lay smoking on our valises after a picnic dinner and stared dreamily at the stars above us.
‘Jolly, isn’t it?’ said the Child, ‘but I s’pose we wouldn’t be feeling quite so comfy if it was the real business.’
‘Don’t,’ said Angelo quietly. ‘I was pretending to myself that we were just a merry camping party, here for pleasure only. I’d forgotten the war.’
But I had not. I was thinking of the last time I had bivouacked—amongst the corn sheaves of a harvest that was never gathered, side by side with friends who were soon to fall, on the night before the first day of Mons, nearly two years ago.
The following day was more or less a repetition of the first, except that we made fewer mistakes and ‘dropped into action’ with more style and finish. We were now becoming fully aware of the almost-forgotten fact that a field battery is designed to be a mobile unit, and we were just beginning to take shape as such when our time was over. A day’s rest for the horses and then we returned to our comfortable rest billets. It had been a strenuous week, but I think everyone had thoroughly enjoyed it....
We have had two days in which to ‘clean up,’ and now to-morrow we are to relieve another battery and take our place in the line again. Our holiday is definitely over. It will take a little time to settle down to the old conditions: our week’s practice of open warfare has spoilt us for this other kind. We who have climbed hills and looked over miles of rolling country will find an increased ugliness in our old flat surroundings. It will seem ludicrous to put our guns into pits again—the guns that we have seen bounding over rough ground behind the straining teams. To be cooped up in a brick O.P. staring at a strip of desolation will be odious after our bivouacs under the stars and our dashes into action under a blazing sun. Worst of all, perhaps, is the thought that the battery will be split up again into ‘gun line’ and ‘wagon line,’ with three miles or more separating its two halves, instead of its being, as it has been all these weeks, one complete cohesive unit. But what must be, must be; and it is absurd to grumble. Moreover—the end is not yet.
‘Let’s toss up for who takes first turn at the O.P. when the relief is completed,’ suggested the Child.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, remembering something suddenly. ‘Do you know what to-day is?’
‘Friday,’ he volunteered, ‘and to-morrow ought to be a half-holiday, but it won’t be, ’cos we’re going into action.’