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Updated: June 20, 2025
Wilde and myself accompanied them, and as Judd and Bob Pottinger were also of the party I heard more details of what B Battery's forward section had done the evening before. "I saw you turn into the valley at the trot," I said to Judd. "Yes, by Gad," he replied; "and when we got into the valley we made it a canter. Those dead horses will show you what the valley has been like."
"Why, this place must be a paradise in peace times," said the doctor, entranced by the sweet tranquillity of the spot. "It's like a lover's walk you see in pictures." We strode over fallen trees and followed the telephone wire across a strip of rich green. B Battery's guns were tucked beneath some stubby full-leaved trees that would hide them from the keenest-eyed aerial observer.
Our first two shells fell short, but they were followed by three others, clean into the battery's embrasure, with such obvious effect that the big weapon inside must either have been dismantled or put out of action. Since then it has not spoken, and the sailors therefore naturally claim that they have silenced it for good and all.
Major Simpson had gone down to B Battery's waggon line to secure something like a night's rest although I might say that after the spring of 1917 the Boche night-bombers saw to it that our waggon lines were no longer the havens of peace they used to be. Disaster followed. The Boche drenched the battery position with gas.
Tom pressed frantically on the spring of the lamp as he ran, but the lamp gave forth a flickering gleam that was little better than no light at all. The long use of the lamp in the cave had weakened the storage battery. "Give us the light!" called Dave, as they reached the tree. "Can't! The battery's on a strike," answered Reade grimly.
One monster, made of boiler iron, a huge cross, is popularly believed to be still hidden in the bay. The person possessing the chart wherein the masked battery's place was set down is said to have destroyed it and fled. Let us hope, however, that this is an error.
At first, however, the battery's fire had no effect, as from the elevation on which the guns stood, the shot went whizzing over it. Dumont had sent thirty men to a small bluff, covered with boulder and scrub, within 450 yards of the battery, and these opened a sharp fire.
In these dugouts every phase of the battery's life except the actual serving of the guns went on. Officers and men alike ate and slept in them. They were much snugger within than you might fancy. A lot of the men had given homelike touches to their habitations.
The refined joy of planting shells in the midst of the other battery's formation would appear a little thing when the infantry came swooping out of the woods. The face of a youthful rider, who was jerking his frantic horse with an abandon of temper he might display in a placid barnyard, was impressed deeply upon his mind. He knew that he looked upon a man who would presently be dead.
"And yet," said the matron on second thought, "it may really have helped her to bear up." "Against what?" "Oh, all our general disturbance and distress, but the battery's in particular. You know its very guns are, as we may say, hers, and everything that happens around them, or to any one who belongs to them in field, camp, or hospital, happens, in her feeling, to her."
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