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So his rehearsals had gone; it was the performance now! Another minute before the terrific racket of the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would advance before them. He ran his eye down the trench. The man next him was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at cricket. Further down, a man was feeling his puttees. A voice said: "Wot price the orchestra nah!"
There came, too, through that embrasure, or through the gateway of the fort, every now and again, the rattle of rifles, the sharp tap-tap of machine-guns, and the snap and bark of the soixante-quinze as the French sent their curtain-fire out beyond the plateau.
In addition to the advancing curtain-fire immediately preceding the troops, a second screen of fire is dropped between the enemy's first and second lines, thus preventing the men in the first line from retreating and making it equally impossible for the men in the second line to get reinforcements or supplies to their comrades in the first.
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