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The grievances of the Infantry, however, are not limited to those supplied by the Royal Artillery. There are the machine-guns and the trench-mortars. The machine-gunner is a more or less accepted nuisance by this time. He has his own emplacements in the line, but he never appears to use them. Machine-gun fire always provokes retaliation.
Hudson and I both slept in the perforated room; the servants in the larger chamber, near the fire bucket. I got up just before dawn as usual, and taking advantage of the grey light, stole about the village and around the house, sizing up the locality and seeing how my position stood with regard to the various machine-gun emplacements.
It was delayed for a moment while picks and shovels were plied upon the top of the hill to make slight emplacements for the guns, and at last, at ten minutes before eight o'clock, the first piece started the difficult ascent. The drivers stood up in their stirrups and lashed their horses and shouted; the horses plunged and reared and jumped. The piece stuck half way up the hill.
Trade, commerce, finances, journalism, science, religion, the advantages to be had by royal marriages, by the elevation of German princes to the thrones of the lesser states, had all been calculated with as much care and precision as the choice of sites in foreign countries for the erection of concrete emplacements for their monster guns.
Infantrymen and sappers marched to their tasks round and about the line. Roads were repaired, telephone wires placed deep in the ground, trees felled for dug-outs and gun emplacements, water-pipes laid up to the trenches ready to be extended across conquered territory, while small-gauge and large-gauge railways seemed to spring to being in the night. Then came days of terror for the enemy.
True, she had patients and a doctor on board when a pinnace from one of our cruisers examined her, but she also had machine-guns mounted and gun emplacements screwed to her deck, and all the adaptations required for a commerce raider. So our admiral decided that, after due notice, so suspicious a craft were better sunk.
Our guns were also trained on such objects as headquarters, railroads, heavy artillery emplacements, cross roads, ammunition dumps, aviation hangars, etc., from information that had previously been obtained by the Flash and Sound Ranging sections. The heavy artillery did great damage far in the rear.
When war broke out and the troops arrived on the ground, the buildings were hastily pulled down and there were the emplacements all ready for the guns. Some years ago a report came to the War Office that a foreign Power was making gun emplacements in a position which had not before been suspected of being of military value, and they were evidently going to use it for strategical purposes.
It had been too late to call back the cavalry. Peter's eyes followed Boylan's sweeping arm. The horsemen were in skirmish on the slope, just breaking out into charge. The town above and the emplacements adjoining which had kept their secret so well, were now in a blur of sulphur and action directed upon the cavalry charge.
When night fell Colonel Sim was despatched with a party of Sappers to clear the track and to prepare two emplacements upon the top, but in his advance he met the retiring infantry. Throughout the day reinforcements had pushed up the hill, until two full brigades had been drawn into the fight.
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