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I have read more than one book about it since, and could draw you a map blindfold and tell you where the counter-batteries stood, and where the lunette which Colborne carried, and how far behind it lay the Convent of San Francisco; where the parallels ran, where the French brought down a howitzer, and where by a sortie they came near to cutting up a division.
I wish I knew exactly where they are intending to place their heavy batteries. If I did, we should know where to strengthen our defenses and plant our counter-batteries.
The English had stood nine hours in this fire of yours; by degrees, leaning well away from it; answering it with counter-batteries; and were not yet ruined by it, when the Grammont crisis came! Noailles should have dashed fresh troops across his Bridges, and tried to handle them well. Noailles did not do that; or do anything but wring his hands.
"Some six hours followed of thrice-intricate deploying, planting of field-pieces, counter-batteries; ranking, re-ranking, shuffling hither and then thither of horse and foot; Noailles's cannonade proceeding all the while; the English, still considerably exposed to it, and standing it like stones; chivalrous Grammont, and with better reason the English, much wishing these preliminaries were done.
I looked into an adjoining tent and found the liaison officer from the heavies busy on the telephone. "A 5·9 battery shooting from the direction of Ginchy. Right! You can't give me a more definite map-spotting? Right-o! We'll attend to it! Give me counter-batteries, will you?" "Heavies doing good work to-day?" I asked. "Rather," he returned happily.
On the night of the 9th, while the First Division dug at the trenches, our men helped with the building of three counter-batteries a little ahead of the convent; and, because the French guns began to make our hill uncomfortable, we shifted camp and laid a shallow trench from it, along which we could steal to work under fair cover.
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