A German battery was evidently making a target of this portion of the road, for the shells continued to pound up and down its length. After the sharp burst of one quartette fairly between the ranks of a marching platoon, there was a call for stretchers, and the regimental stretcher-bearers came up at the double, busied themselves for a few minutes about some crumpled forms, lifted them, and moved off along the road back to the Red Cross flag of the dressing station. The shell-swept stretch of road was growing uncomfortably dangerous, and it was with a good deal of relief that the Stonewalls saw their leading platoon turn aside and disappear into the entrance of a communication trench.
“This ’ere,” said Pug, with a sigh of satisfaction, “is a blinkin’ sight more like the thing; and why them lazy beggars of a Staff ’aven’t ’ad this communication trench took back a bit further beats me.”
“It sure is a comfortable feeling,” agreed Kentucky, “to hear those bullets whistling along upstairs, and we safe down below ground level.”
The communication trench was very narrow and twisted, and wormed its way for an interminable distance towards the still constant rattle of rifle fire and banging grenades. The men had not the slightest idea what had happened, or what was happening. Some of them had asked questions of the stretcher bearers or of the wounded back in the village, but these it appeared had come from the support trenches and from the firing-line before the uproar of rifle fire had indicated the commencement of an attack by one side or the other. The long, straight, single-file line of Stonewalls moved slowly and with frequent checks and halts for over an hour; then they were halted and kept waiting for a good thirty minutes, some chafing at their inaction, others perfectly content to sit there in the safety of the deep trench. A few men tried to raise themselves and climb the straight sided walls of the trench to the level ground, but the long grass growing there still hid their view, and the few who would have climbed right out on to the level were sharply reprimanded and ordered back by the officers and N.C.O.s; so the line sat or stood leaning against the walls, listening to the unintelligible sounds of the conflict, trying to glean some meaning and understanding of the action’s progress from them.
The section of trench where Larry and his friends were waiting was suddenly overcast by a shadow, and the startled men, glancing hastily upward, saw to their astonishment a couple of Highlanders standing over and looking down upon them. One had a red, wet bandage about his head, the other his hose top slit down and dangling about his ankle, and a white bandage wound round the calf of his leg. The two stood for a minute looking down upon the men crouching and squatting in their shelter, on men too astonished for the moment to speak or do aught save gape upwards at the two above them. Somehow, after their relief at escaping from the open into the shelter of the trench, after the doubts and misgivings with which some of them had ventured to raise themselves and peer out above ground level, the angry orders given to them to get back and not expose themselves, after having, in fact, felt themselves for an hour past to be separate only from a sudden and violent death by the depth of their shelter trench, it took their breath away to see two men walking about and standing with apparent unconcern upon a bullet swept level, completely without protection, indifferent to that fact. But they recovered quickly from their amazement.
“Holloa, Jock,” Pug called up to them, “what’s the latest news in the dispatches? ’Ave we commenced the attack?”
“Commenced? Aye, and gey near finished, as far as we’re concerned.”
There was a quick chorus of questions to this. “How far had we gone?” “Was the first line taken?” “Was the attack pushing on?” “Had the casualties been heavy?” and a score of other questions.
The two Highlanders bobbed down hastily, as a heavy shell fell with a rolling cr-r-r-ump within a hundred yards of them.
“We’ve got the first line where we attacked,” said one of them after a moment, “and we’re pushing on to the second. They say that we have taken the second and third lines down there on the right, but the Huns are counter-attacking, and have got a bit of the third line back. I’m no’ sure what’s happened on the left, but I’m hearin’ the attack was held, and pretty near wiped out. I only ken that our lot is tryin’ to bomb up there to the left, and no’ makin’ much progress.”
His companion rose and stepped across the narrow trench.
“Come on, Andy,” he said, “we’ll awa’ back to the dressin’ station, and the first train to the North. This is no’ just a health resort to be bidin’ in. Good luck to you, lads.”
“Good luck, so long,” chorused the trench after them, and the two vanished from sight.
There was a buzz of excited talk after they had gone – talk that lasted until word was passed back along the trench and the line rose and commenced to stumble onward again.
“I suppose,” said Larry, “they’ll be moving us up in support. I hope we get out of this beastly trench soon, and see something of what’s going on.”
Billy Simson grunted. “Maybe we’ll see plenty, and maybe a bit too much, when we get out of here,” he said, “and it is decently safe down here anyhow.”
Pug snorted. “Safe?” he echoed; “no safer than it is above there, by the look of them two Jocks. They don’t seem to be worritin’ much about it being safe. I believe we would be all right to climb up out of this sewer and walk like bloomin’ two-legged humans above ground, instead of crawling along ’ere like rats in a ’Ampton Court maze of drains.”
But, whether they liked it or not, the Stonewalls were condemned to spend most of that day in their drains. They moved out at last, it is true, from the communication trench into one of the support trenches, and from this they could catch an occasional narrow glimpse of the battlefield. They were little the wiser for that, partly because the view gave only a restricted vision of a maze of twisting lines of parapets, of which they could tell no difference between British and German; of tangles of rusty barbed wire; and, beyond these things, of a drifting haze of smoke, of puffing white bursts of cotton wool-like smoke from shrapnel, and of the high explosives spouting gushes of heavy black smoke, that leaped from the ground and rose in tall columns with slow-spreading tops. They could not even tell which of these shells were friends’ and which were foes’, or whether they were falling in the British or the German lines.
Pug was frankly disgusted with the whole performance.
“The people at ’ome,” he complained, “will see a blinkin’ sight more of this show in the picture papers and the kinema shows than me what’s ’ere in the middle of it.”
“Don’t you fret, Pug,” said Larry; “we’ll see all we’re looking for presently. Those regiments up front must have had a pretty hot strafing, and they’re certain to push us up from the supports into the firing-line.”
“I don’t see what you’ve got to grumble about,” put in Billy Simson; “we’re snug and comfortable enough here, and personally I’m not in any hurry to be trottin’ out over the open, with the German Army shootin’ at me.”
“I admit I’m not in any hurry to get plugged myself,” drawled Kentucky, “but I’ve got quite a big mite of sympathy for Pug’s feelings. I’m sure getting some impatient myself.”
“Anyway,” said Pug, “it’s about time we ’ad some grub; who’s feelin’ like a chunk of bully and a pavin’-stone?”
The others suddenly woke to the fact that they also were hungry. Bully beef and biscuits were produced, and the four sat and ate their meal, and lit cigarettes, and smoked contentedly after it, with the roar of battle ringing in their ears, with the shells rumbling and moaning overhead, and the bullets piping and hissing and singing past above their trench.
After their meal, in the close, stagnant air of the trench they began to feel drowsy, and presently they settled themselves in the most comfortable positions possible, and dozed off to sleep. They slept for a good half hour, heedless of all the turmoil about them, and they were roused