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A man at the bottom of the trench is fixing a rifle grenade in his rifle. "Shall I put this one over?" "Gawd knows." Bill is craning his head from side to side, standing on the fire-step. "Lumme! there they are. Let 'em 'ave it, Joe. It's a ruddy working party." Drawing a steady hand he fires, only to eject his spent cartridge at once and fire again.
There was no sleep in the dugouts, and every hour was a long thrill. "I don't mind saying," said a petty officer who had fought in several naval actions during the war and is a man of mark, "that I had a fair fright when I was doing duty on the fire-step. 'I suppose I've got to look through a periscope, I said. 'Not you, said the sergeant.
"Great God!" said one of the M. P.'s, and the other was silent, but pale. Certainly there was all the noise of a big attack. The Worcesters were standing-to on the fire-step, firing rifle grenades and throwing bombs with terrific energy.
When the barrage lifts, therefore, it is of vital importance to man the fire-step immediately. It is not easy to turn a large number of men quickly out of deep dug-outs which may thus prove only a Fool's Paradise.
He turned and went out. I followed. He walked along the communication trench after his men, and I along the line of my silent sentries. I spoke to one or two, and then stood on the fire-step, looking out into the night. I had the Frenchman's words in my head: "We give a little more of France into your keeping!"
Men who were sentries by day or were the covering party for the wiring might be detailed for this. After that was over the same men took turns as sentries. Sleep was confined to what those not on duty could snatch, wrapped only in the extra covering of a waterproof sheet, in a sitting posture on the fire-step. At dawn, when the men at last could have slept heavily, came morning stand-to.
Then we walked, up sinister roads, or along communication trenches, to the fire-step in the front line, or into places like "Plug Street" wood and Kemmel village, and the ruins of Vermelles, and the lines by Neuve Chapelle the training-schools of British armies where always birds of death were on the wing, screaming with high and rising notes before coming to earth with the cough that killed... After hours in those hiding-places where boys of the New Army were learning the lessons of war in dugouts and ditches under the range of German guns, back again to the little white chateau at Tatinghem, with a sweet scent of flowers from the fields, and nightingales singing in the woods and a bell tinkling for Benediction in the old church tower beyond our gate.
With a peculiar sliding movement it advanced along the bottom, and then it stopped and stood upright. Speechless with amazement, Reginald found himself gazing into the eyes of a man which were glaring at him out of a small slit in the sacking which completely covered him. A pair of dirty earth-stained hands gently laid down a rifle on the fire-step a rifle with a telescopic sight.
In addition, once the miasma had subsided, and the idea had been explained to them, the three supers became quite keen themselves. It was one of them, in fact, who suggested the first detail. "'Ow are we to know, sir," he remarked, as they sat resting on an adjacent fire-step after three hours' strenuous exhuming, "that supposing two of the perishers fall through the 'ole they won't escape?
Others sit on the fire-step or lean smoking against the clay wall. Who would dream to look at their bold, careless faces that this is a front line, and that at any moment it is possible that a grey wave may submerge them? With all their careless bearing I notice that every man has his gas helmet and his rifle within easy reach.
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