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Silent, black and no one saw it as it winged away into the night. Tara I must revert now to those moments in the tower room when Tarrano dissolved the isolation barrage which Wolfgar had thrown around us. Georg escaped, as I have recounted. Tarrano there in the tower room rendered me unconscious. I came to myself on the broad divan and found Elza bending over me.
About 9.30 a.m. the barrage was felt to lift westwards from Fayet and the fitful clatter of Lewis guns, firing in short bursts with sometimes a long one exhausting a 'drum, was heard. In the front line showers of stick bombs announced the enemy's presence. Everywhere it seemed that quick-moving bodies in grey uniforms were closing in from either flank and were behind.
A big counter-bombardment was now working up from our side. I spoke on the telephone to Raven, who told me that all our Batteries were firing "double vivace." At a quarter past six the Austrians attacked. There was a terrific rattle of Italian machine gun fire, almost drowning the sound of the heavier explosions, and a stream of rockets went up from our front line calling for more barrage.
The first barrage, or curtain of fire, ever used to my knowledge was a feeble German effort in the Ypres salient in the autumn of 1914, though the French drum fire distributed over a certain area had, in a sense, a like effect.
They had been sitting in their dugouts and walked out when an Englishman appeared at the door. Yes, they said that they had been caught just before relief, and the relief had been carried out in an unexpected fashion. If they must be taken they, too, liked the patent barrage.
At first we thought we were going to be let off without any retaliation at all, but the following morning at "stand to" a fairly heavy barrage came down for half-an-hour on the breastwork support line presumably to break up any intended attack. "B" Company Headquarters most unluckily received a direct hit causing six casualties.
He was stricken down, and lay above Assouan in a hut by the shore, from which he could see the Temple of Philoe, and Pharaoh's Bed, and the great rocks, and the swift-flowing Nile. Here lay his greatest hope, the splendid design of his life the great barrage of Assouan. With it he could add to the wealth of Egypt one-half.
The city could not be approached in front from the valley floor; its entire surface beyond the turn was swept by the light-rays. Approach from below in the rear was likewise barred. Had the barrage been not so high our girls might have flown over it and dropped bombs, or we might have sent rockets over it and dropped them into the city. Neither of these projects was practical.
This was effected by an intensive system of combining and interlocking patrols, and by maintaining, in close co-operation with surface craft, a protective barrage across suitable stretches of water, such as the Straits of Dover.
And the story of this "I" Company going in to relieve the French-Russian force under a terrific bombardment and barrage of machine guns, the distant roar of which was heard for three days and nights by the writer who was on an adjoining front, has not been told with complete emphasis to the good fighting spirit of Captain Winslow's men. We would like to make it stronger.
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