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And as I realized that probably this was just a part of the regular day's work, a bit of ordinary strafing, and not a feature of a grand attack, I took note of the rhythm. It went something like this, as near as I can gie it to you in print: "Roamin' in the PUH LAH gloamin' BAM! "On the WHUFF! BOOM! bonny BR-R-R! banks o' BIFF Clyde ZOW!" And so it went all through the rest of the concert.
"We thought we were strafing a mob of Huns. No damage, I trust?" "You would have heard of it before now if there had been," replied Wilmshurst. "The nearest one just dusted some of my men, that's all. We couldn't get you to see that we were a Haussa platoon, and I had a nice old job keeping my men in hand. They wanted to take pot shots at you.
"They won't come over 'ere and fall into the 'ole and then shout to us to let down the trap." He thoughtfully lit a Woodbine. "The 'Un will be strafing if there's a raid on, and there'll be the 'ell of a beano going on, and no one won't never 'ear nothing." With which sage aphorism he relapsed into silence, and a gloom settled on the meeting. "By Jove, you fellows, we must think of something!
Why were they kept up there while "nothing was doing"? Why were they not sent south to give a hand to the lads who were daily fighting a stubborn retreat against avalanches of German reserves? The Passchendaele sector remained unusually quiet; little strafing occurred from either artillery, with the exception of a sunset entertainment organised daily for the benefit of ration parties and reliefs.
For three-quarters of an hour this "strafing" continued, then giving Bosche ten minutes to settle down we came out of our holes and corners. What sights we were! Collecting my apparatus, I again crossed "No Man's Land," and carefully made my way into the village of Neuve Chapelle itself. To describe it would only be to repeat what I said of the devastated city of Ypres.
Go and draw Ayling's attention to them. A little preliminary strafing will do them no harm." Five minutes later one of Ayling's machine-guns spoke out, and a cascade of tiles came sliding down the roofs of the offending cottages. "That will tickle them up, if they have any guns set up on those rafters," observed the Major, with ghoulish satisfaction. "I wonder if Brer Bosche is going to attack.
Blofeld got the military cross for the night's work, and several of the enlisted men got the D.C.M. Altogether it was a successful raid. The best part of it was getting back. After the strafing we had given Fritz on the raid, he behaved himself reasonably well for quite a while.
The 'plane leaped upward and away, and the Blue Marines sped on its way with a stream of following shells. "If the Huns' minds work on the fixed and appointed path, one would expect the same old field will get a strafing this afternoon," said the captain afterwards.
And then the Nameless Terror, that lurks in dark corners when one is a small boy, gripped me. I was frightened of the dark, filled with a sense of impending disaster! It took about ten minutes to wake properly and shake it off. I must try to get more sleep somehow; but it is jolly difficult. The great bombardment has begun, the long-promised strafing of the Boche.
We stayed on till Howell's expert eye had had its fill of details, with no burst of shells to interfere with our comfort; though by the rules we ought to have had a good "strafing," which was another reminder of my debt to the German for his consideration to the American correspondent at the British front.
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