BY JEFFERY E. JEFFERY.
By the ears and the eyes and the brain,
By the limbs and the hands and the wings,
We are slaves to our masters the guns,
But their slaves are the masters of kings!
Gilbert Frankau.
Somewhere about the middle of June, we knew definitely that we were ‘for it,’ as the soldier says; we knew that our division was one of those chosen for the great concentration which was to culminate in the ‘great push’—and we were proud of the distinction. A three days’ march brought us to a certain training area, where we camped for a week and worked some seventeen hours a day—counting, that is, from réveillé at 4 A.M. until the last bit of harness was hung up clean and ready for the morrow at 9 P.M.
During this period two incidents of note occurred. One was that the Child suddenly developed pleurisy, and was removed to hospital—a serious loss at any time, but especially so at this particular moment. The other was that a squadron of hostile aircraft flew over our manœuvre ground and actually dropped a bomb within 150 yards of the tail of our column. Which, seeing that we were some twenty miles from the nearest part of the line and at the moment only playing at soldiers, was most disconcerting.
From the time when we left this training area until, about three weeks later, we were withdrawn to rest in a quiet part of the line, I kept a rough diary of our particular share in the greatest battle ever fought by the British Army. The following are some extracts from it, in no way embellished, but only enlarged so as to make them intelligible.
June 27.—Nine-hour night march southwards, arriving in comfortable billets at 3.30 A.M. Aeroplanes (or at any rate, hostile ones) are the curse of this war: if it was not for fear of them we could move by daylight in a reasonable manner. The old saddler, dozing on a wagon, fell off and was run over: nothing broken, but he will be lost to us. A great pity, as he’s a charming character and a first-class workman.