It began like the noise of rushing water, and for a moment the Brigade
Major hoped that somebody had taken it upon himself to wash the
orderly. The noise, however, was followed by a succession of thumps
which put an end to this pretty flight of fancy. Aghast he surveyed
the scene before him. Close to the Brigade Headquarters' dug-out was
an old French dump of every conceivable kind of explosive made up into
every known form of projectile. No longer was it a picture of Still
Life. The Sleeping Beauty was awake indeed. The Prince had come in the
form of a common whizz-bang.
As he looked (and ducked) a flock of aerial torpedoes, propelled by
the explosion of one of their number, rose and scattered as if at the
approach of a hostile sportsman. Another explosion blew what seemed to
be a million rockets sizzling into the air.
The store was on fire!
The Brigade Major retired.
* * * * *
Everybody was in the Signal dug-out (Signals build deep and strong).
Secretly the clerks were praying for the disintegration of the
typewriter and the total destruction of the overwhelming mass of paper
(paper warfare had been terrible of late). The Staff Captain and
the O.C. Gum Boots, who had been approaching the Headquarters, were
already half a mile down the road and still going strong.
The Division rang up. One need hardly have mentioned that. In times of
stress the higher formations rarely fail.
"What's going on?" they asked.
The Brigade Major was just going to say, when suddenly he remembered.
That very morning he had been severely strafed for speaking of
important things over the telephone when so near the enemy. "Had he
not read the Divisional G 245/348/24 of the 29th inst.? What was the
good of issuing orders to defeat the efficiency of the Bosch listening
apparatus if they were not obeyed?" etc., etc.
True, it was conceivable that even without the aid of a delicate
listening apparatus the Bosch was cognisant of an explosion that
made his whole front line quiver; still orders is orders. So the
Brigade-Major swallowed hard.
"C-can't tell you over the wires. Your G 245/348/24...."
"Yes, yes, we know all about that. Don't say it _definitely_, but give
us an _idea_. _Where_ is all this noise?"
"Here!--Oh!" piped the B.M. as a crump shook the receiver out of his
hand.
"Send it in code at once. The G.O.C. is strafing horribly to know."
To encode a message which may be your last words on earth is not the
easiest of tasks. It has no romance about it. Who would relish
an obituary such as: "He died like a hero, his last words being
'XB35/067K'"?
To the ramping of the continuous crump the B.M. scraped away the dirt
and stuff that had fallen from the throbbing walls of his dug-out
and fished out the Code-Book. Hurriedly he turned over the pages to
"Ammunition" and read down the set phrases and their code equivalents.
Four times he relit the candle. There seemed nothing under this
heading applicable to the situation. "Send up" was one, but that had
already been done. "Am/is/are/running short of" was another, but it
was doubtful if the Division would see the real meaning of it.
"Ah, here we are," he muttered, relighting the candle for the fifth
time. "Dumps." Alas, there was nothing to convey the situation very
clearly even under this heading. Finally he picked out the nearest he
could find and sent it over the wires.
This is what they decoded to the expectant G.O.C. of the Division:
"_Advanced ammunition depôt has moved_."
The G.O.C. said something which impelled the entire Divisional Staff
to the telephone, where they all grabbed for the receiver.
"What the devil is this code message? We can't understand it. You've
sent in something about the dump at your Brigade Headquarters."
"Ah!" said the B.M. meaningly, "there is _not_ a dump at Brigade
Headquarters now."
"Well, I don't care. We want to know what all this noise is about."
"It's the dump. It's m-moved."
"Moved? Moved where? Give the map reference."
"Map reference?" murmured the B.M. "Oh, my sacred aunt, what fools ...
I'm sorry" (he smiled at them through his teeth) "I can't give you the
_m-map_ reference, but I can give you the _area_ roughly."
"Barmy!" was the word he heard spoken to a bystander at the other end.
"Look here, old man," they said kindly, "we know you're all very tired
and worried, but just try to _think_ a moment. Never mind dumps now.
You can't be making all that noise moving a dump--what?" (Specimen of
Divisional joke--very rare.) "Tell us, is the Bosch shelling?"
"No. They've stopped."
"Good. Then it's all over?"
"No. It's still going on."
"But you just said that it had stopped."
"Yes, it has. But the dump hasn't. It keeps m-moving."
"Poor old bird," they said, "his nerve's gone at last. All right,"
they shouted, "don't you worry. The storeman will look after the dump.
You go to bed and have a good sleep."
"Have a g-good sleep!" muttered the B.M., "that's just like the
Divis--Oh!" and he sat down as a torpedo flopped into his bedroom a
few doors away and made a hole of it.
Then he sat up. The storeman of the Brigade dump was not two hundred
yards away from the active one. The poor fellow was to have gone on
leave that night. Presently it occurred to him that, instead of trying
to decide who should have the reversion of the storeman's leave, it
would be better to go and see if there really was a vacancy. Fifteen
boxes of melinite delayed him but a moment. With melinite you know
the worst at once; it doesn't hang round like boxes of ammunition,
for instance. He called a clerk and together they raced over to the
storeman's dug-out.
"Jock!" cried the clerk. "Are ye there, Jock?"
"Is he quite dead?" said the B.M., making up his mind to use his leave
warrant for himself.
"No, Sir, he's very deaf, that's why he's a storeman. Jo-ock!!"
"Hello!" came from the ground.
"Are ye all right, Jock?"
"Na. There's an awfu' to-do here."
"What's wrong then?"
"Ma candle keeps going oot."
"Are ye all right, though, Jock?"
"Na."
"Well, what's up with ye?"
"I told ye. Ma candle keeps going oot. What's up yon?"
* * * * *
When the B.M. got back he found a one-sided war in progress on the
telephone. The G.O.C. had heated up the wires to red-heat.
"Is that you, Nessel? Where the devil have you been? This noise is
still going on. Tell me what it is. No-dam-nonsense-now. Let's have
it."
"If you want to know and you don't mind the Bosch hearing what I say,
Sir, the dump, the French dump, has b-blown itself to b-blazes."
"Why the _devil_ couldn't you say so before?"
Every dog has his day. With a full and fatuous smile the Brigade-Major
picked up a paper and began: "Reference your G. 245/348/24 of the 29th
inst. It says that--"
Somebody must have taken a bone away from a dog at the other end. He
growled horribly.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Flapper (shyly)._ "COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT A STAMP
STUCK ON AT _THAT_ ANGLE MEANS IN THE LANGUAGE OF POSTAGE-STAMPS?"]
* * * * *