The commanding officer goes back to his station by the telephone, and
waits. Prrrrrt, grumbles the instrument, and this time it is he
himself who takes the receiver. He listens attentively, for it is
difficult to hear along an aerial line, and there is much repetition
before he finally replies "All right!" to his subordinate up above.
A word to a staff-officer, who at once waves to some one near the
guns. Then ensues much activity. Within three minutes every muzzle
has been switched round by hand so as to face the hills on the East,
at half a right angle from its former direction. The gun-layers at
once start laying at the range obtained by those few shots fired some
hours back, and buckets are emptied on the ground, but no effort is
made to dig shelters, for they will be unnecessary. The exposure of
and loss to be caused by the new position is ignored. When all are
at their stations ready to open fire, a whistle sounds.
The suppressed excitement is catching. That the Commander himself is
not unaffected is shown from the manner in which he ostentatiously,
and with almost too great deliberation, selects a cigar from his case
and begins chewing the end of it....
"Prrrrrt," rattles the telephone: the Commander drops the chewed
cigar and listens.
"Are you ready?" gurgles down the wire.
"Yes."
"The head of their column is not far off the poplar tree."
A pause.
* * * * * * *
Meanwhile, on the hilltop, the watcher has again sat down. Now there
is nothing to watch in the sky, he sets himself to study the enemy's
guns, amongst which he seems vaguely to discover some movement. Can
they have suspected anything? As he sweeps his glass carelessly
across the gray cloud toward its terrestrial object, something--a
midge probably--in the upper corner of the object-glass catches his
eye. He puts down the glass and rubs the lens with his handkerchief.
He looks again. The midge is still there. He looks directly at
it--it is a collection of midges. Good God! These are no
midges--they are a covey of war kites high up in the sky! Yes, and
there is the observer hanging some distance below, who must have seen
all!
By this time two or three guns have turned out of the lane and are
unlimbering.
He rises and tries to shout--it is too late.
* * * * * * *
"Now they're turning out of the road, through three or four gaps, to
come into action--now two guns have left the road--hullo!--are you
there?" continues the thin metallic voice down the wire.
"Yes."
"Let them have it."
The Commander, from his lowly position, looks up and nods to a
signaller standing up on a mound; the latter drops his flag.
The air is split by the noise of the whole line of guns as they open
rapid fire. It is like the report of one piece prolonged into a
continuous long note.
Upon the brow of that hill of doom, hiding the sky-line for perhaps
400 yards to the right of the now obscured poplar, appears a crown of
magenta-coloured smoke, out of which a succession of light flashes
sparkle.
* * * * * * *
By those up on that hill is heard a faint roar in the distance,
followed by a whistling sound, and the air above--all round--is full
of crackling reports, shouts, oaths, and groans. Bullets tear the
earth on all sides, and the steel gun-shields ring out like gongs
under their blows. Everything except the dreadful sounds becomes
blurred in the puffs of acrid, tinted smoke which the wind drives
across the hilltop.
* * * * * * *
In a minute, automatically, the fire ceases--a long period for
quick-firing guns which pour out fifteen shells a minute, and much
ammunition, but this is an opportunity given by the gods.
The Commander puts the telephone to his lips:
"Hullo!--is that enough?"
"Wait a minute. My God! It is."
V
Not one return shot has been fired.
The smoke is dissipated by the wind as soon as the squall of shell
ceases, and the scene of the butchery stands revealed.
Behind the hedge are three guns unharmed except for splintered wood.
Their green tint is all mottled with oval patches of shining silver,
plated by the metal of the glancing bullets. Men are lying about
singly, nearly all wounded in the head, and nearly all dead. A few
who still crouch paralyzed behind the shields seem unhurt. Horses
lie tied together by their harness in kicking, screaming bunches. At
the gateway is a tangle of capsized gun, limber, man, and beast,
which entirely blocks that part of the lane.
This is an _abattoir_ better undescribed in detail--a medley of dead
and dying men and animals, and of vehicles jammed into a solid mass.
At intervals guns lie upturned or wedged across. The mass still
struggles and heaves. Here and there drivers have half succeeded in
driving their guns up the bank, in a gallant attempt to get out of
the shambles, with the result that the horses lie dead on the top,
and the guns lie overturned in the hollow. A few unharmed and dazed
officers and men still shout orders and shove and push at the guns.
There, where an ammunition wagon, hit direct by a shell, has
exploded, is a cleared space. Branches and twigs are splintered in
all directions, and the shrapnel balls have stripped the leaves from
the trees and scattered a sparse shower of green over their handiwork.
Though at least one of the shells has not burst exactly, for on its
back, under the hedge on the brow of the hill, lies the headless body
of the young gunner officer--the glasses still in his left hand, a
handkerchief in the right--yet, as the small voice had squeaked down
the telephone wire 5000 yards away--it _is_ enough!