The battery Sergeant-Major was practically asleep. He was all worn out
by the continuous roar of bombardments that had been shaking the
dugouts and dazing his brains for weeks. He was pretty well fed up.
The officer commanding the battery, a young man in a very neat uniform
and of particularly high birth, came up and spat in his face. The
Sergeant-Major sprang to attention, received an order, and took a
stick at once and beat up the tired men. For a message had come to the
battery that some English (God punish them!) were making a road at X.
The gun was fired. It was one of those unlucky shots that come on days
when our luck is out. The shell, a 5.9, lit in the midst of the British
working party. It did the Germans little good. It did not stop the
deluge of shells that was breaking up their guns and was driving
misery down like a wedge into their spirits. It did not improve the
temper of the officer commanding the battery, so that the men suffered
as acutely as ever under the Sergeant-Major. But it stopped the road
for that day.