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We had heard this old ghost story too often to believe a word of it. Our place had been designated where we were to get into extended formation, and our general direction was clear. We filed out of the trench at eight-thirty, and as we passed the other platoons, we had been to the rear, they tossed us the familiar farewell hail, "The best o' luck, mytie."
Let me read you a few sentences from this story, which is commonly bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield, like a woollen lining to a silken mantle, but is full of stately wisdom in processions of paragraphs which sound as if they ought to have a grammatical drum-major to march before their tramping platoons.
He stood there for some time, unrecognized, unnoticed, watching the platoons of broad-chested "flatties" as they swung out and off to their midnight patrols, marking the plainly clad "elbows" as they passed quietly up and down the great stone steps. He thought of Copeland, and the Commissioner, and of his own last hour at Headquarters.
When we awakened it was to reorganise into four companies of two platoons each, indent for damaged and lost equipment and generally get ready to carry on. On the 1st of September we again were on the move forward, arriving at Bullecourt on the following day. From there on the 3rd we moved by Riencourt to a jumping-off point in the Hindenburg Support Line. Here a bloodless battle was engaged in.
Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons.
There were numbers of wounded laid out on the track itself, with none to carry them away; and the Turks were keeping up a hot fire from behind the shelter of the felled trees and standing stumps. The outside range was two hundred yards, and there were several platoons of the enemy who had crept up to within thirty or forty yards and could not be dislodged.
Now his boy was dead lost at sea, as it might have been a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne's big teaships; the wife dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet his many enemies.
The occupants of Forgan's, mostly machine gunners, appear to have realised almost at once the direction of our attack, and opened a hot fire on our left flank as we crossed the Bellenglise road and set off across the valley. "A" Company felt this severely, but far more severe were the losses of "C" Company and those platoons of "B" which did not make their turn into the village.
I had the satisfaction of going back to the drawing-room and telling Janet that the stretcher bearers were to parade at eleven o'clock, and march in the rear of the column Numbers 3 and 4 Platoons which went to relieve trenches. "Rot," said Janet "We can't possibly go out on a night like this." "C.O.'s orders," I said. "The stretchers will be utterly ruined," she said, "not to mention our hats."
We had done about a quarter of the ground between Bayencourt and Sailly-au-Bois when a messenger hurried up to tell me to halt, as several of the platoons of the L S had to pass us. We sat down by a large shell-hole, and the men lit up their pipes and cigarettes and shouted jokes to the men of the other regiment as they passed by.
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