Part 36 (1/2)
”Yes, if all goes well.”
It was quite dark now. The horizon was brilliantly lit by the flashes of big guns, and a continuous roar came throbbing through the soft autumn darkness.
”If this thing goes with a click, as it ought to do,” said Wagstaffe, ”it will be the biggest thing that ever happened--bigger even than Charlie Chaplin.”
”Yes--_if_!” a.s.sented the cautious Blaikie.
”It's a tremendous opportunity for our section of 'K(1),'” continued Wagstaffe. ”We shall have a chance of making history over this, old man.”
”Whatever we make--history or a bloomer--we'll do our level best,”
replied Blaikie. ”At least, I hope 'A' Company will.”
Then suddenly his reserved, undemonstrative Scottish tongue found utterance.
”Scotland for Ever!” he cried softly.
XXI
THE BATTLE OF THE SLAG-HEAPS
”Half-past two, and a cold morning, sir.”
Thus Bobby Little's servant, rousing his employer from uneasy slumber under the open sky, in a newly-constructed trench running parallel to and in rear of the permanent trench line.
Bobby sat up, and peering at his luminous wrist-watch, morosely acquiesced in his menial's gruesome statement. But he cheered up at the next intimation.
”Breakfast is ready, sir.”
Tea and bacon are always tea and bacon, even in the gross darkness and mental tension which precede a Big Push. Presently various humped figures in greatcoats, having gathered in the open ditch which did duty for Officers' Mess, broke into spasmodic conversation--conversation rendered even more spasmodic by the almost ceaseless roar of guns. There were guns all round us--rank upon rank: to judge by the noise, you would have said tier upon tier as well. Half a mile ahead, upon the face of a gentle slope, a sequence of flames would spout from the ground, and a storm of sh.e.l.ls go whistling on their way. No sooner had this happened than there would come a shattering roar from the ground beneath our feet, and a heavy battery, concealed in a hedge fifty yards to our front, would launch its contribution. Farther back lay heavier batteries still, and beyond that batteries so powerful and so distant that one heard the sh.e.l.l pa.s.s before the report arrived. One of these monsters, coming apparently from infinity and bound for the back of beyond, lumbered wearily over the heads of ”A” Company, partaking of breakfast.
Private Mucklewame paused in the act of raising his canteen to his lips.
”There's Wullie awa' for a walk!” he observed.
Considering that they were upon the eve of an epoch-making combat, the regiment were disappointingly placid.
In the Officers' Mess the prevailing note was neither l.u.s.t of battle nor fear of death: it was merely that ordinary snappishness which is induced by early rising and uncomfortable surroundings.
”It's going to rain, too,” grumbled Major Kemp.
At this moment the Colonel arrived, with final instructions from the Brigadier.
”We move off at a quarter to four,” he said, ”up Fountain Alley and Scottish Trench, into Central Boyau”--”boyau” is the name which is given to a communication-trench in trenches which, like those in front of us, are of French extraction--”and so over the parapet. There we extend, as arranged, into lines of half-companies, and go at 'em, making Douvrin our objective, and keeping the Hohenzollern and Fosse Eight upon our left.”
Fosse Eight is a mighty waste-heap, such as you may behold anywhere along the railway in the colliery districts between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The official map calls such an eminence a Fosse; the Royal Engineers call it a Dump; Operation Orders call it a Slag-Heap; experts like Ogg and Hogg (who ought to know if any one does) call it a Bing. From this distance, two miles away, the Fosse looks as big as North Berwick Law. It is one of the many scattered about this district, all carefully numbered by the Ordnance. There are others, again, towards Hulluch and Loos. Number Eight has been the object of pressing attentions on the part of our big guns ever since the bombardment began, three weeks ago; but it still stands up--gaunt, grim, and defiant--against the eastern sky. Whether any one is left alive upon it, or in it, is another question. We shall have cause to remember Fosse Eight before this fight is over.
The Hohenzollern Redoubt, on the other hand, is a most inconspicuous object, but a very important factor in the present situation. It has been thrust forward from the Bosche lines to within a hundred yards of our own--a great promontory, a maze of trenches, machine-gun emplacements, and barbed wire, all flush with or under the ground, and terribly difficult to cripple by sh.e.l.l fire. It has been a source of great exasperation to us--a starting-point for saps, mines, and bombing parties. As already stated, this mighty fortress has been christened by its constructors, the Hohenzollern. It is attached to its parent trench-line by two communicating trenches, which the British Army, not to be outdone in reverence to the most august of dynasties, have named Big and Little Willie respectively.
A struggling dawn breaks, bringing with it promise of rain, and the regiment begins to marshal in the trench called Fountain Alley, along which it is to wind, snake-like, in the wake of the preceding troops, until it debouches over the parapet, a full mile away, and extends into line.