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As I looked, a shrieking hollow whistle overhead, a momentary pause, then "Crumph!" showed clearly what was the matter with the chateau. It was being shelled. The Germans seemed to have a rooted objection to that chateau. Every morning, as we crouched in our mud kennels, we heard those "Crumphs," and soon got to be very good judges of form. We knew they were shelling the chateau.
He was seeing again that line of mud bespattered men, patiently plodding up the communication trench. He was looking upon them sleeping with worn and weary faces, in rain and mudsoaked boots and puttees, down in their flimsy, dark dugouts. He was hearing again the heavy "crash" of the trench mortar, the earth shaking "crumph" of the high explosive, the swift rush of the whizbang.
Here it came, gurgling along through the air; a pause, then "Crumph!" nearly in the same place again, but, if anything, nearer the next farm. The Colonel moved to the window and looked out. "They're after that farm," he said, as he turned away slowly and struck a match by the fireplace to light his pipe with.
Our gunners had focussed on these, and they gave them a good pasting. "Crumph! bang! bang! crumph!" hard at it all the time, whilst shrapnel burst and whizzed about all along the German parapet. The view in front soon became a sort of haze of black dust, as "heavy" after "heavy" burst on top of the Boche positions. Columns of earth and black smoke shot up like giant fountains into the air.
That ponderous, slow rotating whistle of a "Johnson" caught our well-trained ears; a pause! then a reverberating, hollow-sounding "crumph!" We looked at each other. "Heavies!" we all exclaimed. "Look out! here comes another!" and sure enough there it was, that gargling crescendo of a whistle followed by a mighty crash, considerably nearer.
We got him in and put him down in an outbuilding which had been turned into a temporary dressing station. Shells were crashing into the roof of the farm and exploding round it in great profusion. Every minute one heard the swirling rush overhead, the momentary pause, saw the cloud of red dust, then "Crumph!" That farm was going to be extinguished, I could plainly see.
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