"WHEN WE BEGIN TO PUSH"
"Here we are," said the Colonel, halting his horse. "Fine view one gets
from here."
"Rather a treat to be able to see over a bit of country again, after so
many months of the flat," said, the Adjutant, reining up beside the
other. They were halted on the top of a hill, or, father, the corner of
an edge on a wide plateau. On two sides of them the ground fell away
abruptly, the road they were on dipping sharply over the edge and
sweeping round and downward in a well-graded slope along the face of
the hill to the wide flats below. Over these flats they could see for
many miles, miles of cultivated fields, of little woods, of gentle
slopes. They could count the buildings of many farms, the roofs of half
a dozen villages, the spires of twice as many churches, the tall
chimneys and gaunt frame towers of scattered pit-heads. It had been
raining all day, but now in the late afternoon the clouds had broken
and the light of the low sun was tinging the landscape with a mellow
golden glow.
"There's going to be a beautiful sunset presently," said the Colonel,
"with all those heavy broken clouds about. Let's dismount and wait for
a bit."
Both dismounted and handed their reins to the orderly, who, riding
behind them, had halted when they did, but now at a sign came forward.
"We'll just stroll to that rise on the left," the Colonel said. "The
best view should be from there."
The Adjutant lingered a moment. "Take their bits out, Trumpeter," he
said, "and let them pick a mouthful of grass along the roadside."
A rough country track ran to the left off the main road, and the two
walked along it a couple of hundred yards to where it plunged over the
crest and ran steeply down the hillside. Another main road ran along
the flat parallel with the hill foot, and along this crawled a long
khaki column.
"Look at the light on those hills over there," said the Colonel. "Fine,
isn't it?"
The Adjutant was busily engaged with the field-glasses he had taken
from the case slung over his shoulder and was focusing them on the road
below.
"I say," he remarked suddenly, "those are the Canadians. I didn't know
the ----th Division was so far south. Moving up front, too." The
Colonel dropped his gaze to the road a moment and then swept it slowly
over the country-side. "Yes," he said, "and this area is pretty well
crowded with troops when you look closely."
The light on the distant hills was growing more golden and beautiful,
the clouds were beginning to catch the first tints of the sunset, but
neither men for the moment noticed these things, searching with their
gaze the landscape below, sifting it over and picking out a battery of
artillery camped in a big chalk-pit by the roadside, the slow-rising
and drifting columns of blue smoke that curled up from a distant wood
and told of the regiment encamped there, the long strings of horses
converging on a big mine building for the afternoon watering, the lines
of transport wagons parked on the outskirts of a village, the shifting
khaki figures that stirred about every farm building in sight, the row
of gray-painted motor-omnibuses, drawn up in a long line on a side
road. The countryside that under a first look slept peacefully in the
afternoon sunlight, that drowsed calmly in the easy quiet of an
uneventful field and farm existence, proved under the closer searching
look to be a teeming hive of activity, a close-packed camp of
well-armed fighting men, a widespread net and chain of men and guns and
horses. The peaceful countryside was overflowing with men and bristling
with bayonets; every village was a crammed-full military cantonment,
every barn stuffed with soldiers like an overfilled barracks.
The Adjutant whistled softly. "This," he said, and nodded again and
again to the plain below, "this looks like business--at last."
"Yes," said the Colonel, "at last. It's going to be a very different
story this time, when we begin to push things."
"Hark at the guns," said the Adjutant, and both stood silent a moment
listening to the long, deep, rolling thunder that boomed steady and
unbroken as surf on a distant beach. "And they're our guns too,
mostly," went on the Adjutant. "I suppose we're firing more shells in
an ordinary trench-war-routine day now than we dared fire in a month
this time last year. Last year we were short of shells, the year before
we were short of guns and shells and men. Now hear the guns and look
down there at a few of the men."
Through the still air rose from below them the shrill crow of a
farmyard rooster, the placid mooing of a cow, the calls and laughter of
some romping children.
But the two on the hillside had no ear for these sounds of peace. They
heard only that distant sullen boom of the rumbling guns, the throbbing
foot-beats of the marching battalions below them, the plop-plopping
hoofs and rattling wheels of wagons passing on their way up to the
firing line with food for the guns.
"Our turn coming," said the Adjutant--"at last."
"Yes," the Colonel said, and repeated grimly--"at last."