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Updated: June 20, 2025
"I'm going to keep an officer at B Battery's rear O.P. until the last moment, and the line must run from him to here and thence over the canal to the batteries in their new positions. You quite understand? Leave me one telephonist. We'll have dinner and get the kit and the mess cart back to the waggon lines; and you'd better get your line out immediately after dinner."
These landmarks are called targets, and are numbered. On our battery's chart, that road was called 'Target Seventeen, Range 6000, three degrees, thirty minutes left'. D 238 Battery consisted of four '4.5' howitzers, and fired a thirty-five pound H. E. shell.
The open carriage spun round the battery's right and up its front to where a knot of comrades hid the prostrate Charlie; the surgeon, Kincaid, and Flora crouching at his side, the citizen from the balcony still protecting grandmamma, and the gilded eagle of the unpresented standard hovering over all.
By a hand-shake with their god I had ground-circuited their wire and got their monster battery's whole charge. He was tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean cut and conspicuously intellectual face, and a deep and kindly eye.
He glanced with deep sorrow at his dark green coat, and strode up and down the room. "This is my only hope," he went on, with grim satisfaction, "that my beloved captain will soon succumb to D.T." Reimers reflected. "You must allow that this battery's unfortunate condition is quite exceptional. Let me make a suggestion. Provoke Mohr to a quarrel! You'll be sure to be backed up.
A shell took off a sponger's head, but the sponge-staff was caught by another before it fell, and the gun fired again without a pause. A shrapnel swept away every man about one gun. The Lieutenant looked inquiringly at the Sergeant, and in an instant another squad seemed to spring up from the ground to continue the firing without missing a note in the battery's rhythm.
"As a matter of fact, sir, I've kept going on ration rum." When the colonel and Major Bullivant went off, up rode Beadle in an extraordinary get-up: British warm, gum-boots, and pyjamas. He had been able to get no change since the Boche 8-inch had wiped out B Battery's mess at the opening of the Hun bombardment on the 21st.
I wondered if my shot would tell. I tried to visualize its consequences. It might strike some vital spot. It might kill some man whose life was of the utmost value to the enemy. It might it might do anything! And I knew that my shot would be watched; Normabell, sitting up there on the Pimple in his little observatory, would watch it, as he did all of that battery's shots. Would be make a report?
Schumann called him by his pet name, rubbing his cheek against the velvet nostrils, and then only did the horse become quiet. The sergeant-major could have shed tears. But he wanted to make an end of it, and clear out from these barracks, where he no longer had his place. Lingeringly he quitted the stable, and going out on to the parade-ground, stood once more before the battery's memorial tablet.
The good doctor, to whose unwearied care and kindness I owe much, had cut it open and inserted a drainage tube; an added charm being given the operation, and the subsequent dressings, by the enthusiasm with which the piums and boroshudas took part therein. I could hardly hobble, and was pretty well laid up. "But there aren't no 'stop conductor, while a battery's changing ground."
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