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The two had hardly exchanged a few low-pitched sentences when Bobby was summoned back to the telephone. "Is that Captain Little?" "Yes, sir." "Has your patrol come in?" "No, sir." Captain's Little's last answer was delivered in a distinctly insubordinate manner. Feeling slightly relieved, he returned to the firing-step.
I yelled, and disappeared. It was quite dark in the fire-trenches by seven o'clock. My men, with every stitch of equipment on their backs, stood on the firing-step and kept up a dilatory fire on the Turkish lines. "Maintain an intermittent fire," I ordered, as I walked among them.
My brain, crowded with the bombardment, had room for only two clear thoughts the one, that I was standing with a foot on the firing-step, my revolver cocked in my hand; the other, that, when the mine gave the grand signal, I should clamber mechanically over the parapet and rush into turmoil. Hurry up with that mine oh, hurry up! My limbs at least were shivering with impatience to be over and away.
I remember one flighty youth, who sat down on the firing-step the night before he had to go over the top, and wrote a simple letter to everybody he'd cared for. He wrote to his father, saying: 'If there's anything in my bank, I'd like my brother to have it. But, if there's a deficit, I'm beastly sorry. Think of him putting his tin-pot house in order like that.
To improve matters, old "Glory" always contained at least two feet of water, and on a cold rainy night it was "some job" standing at listening-post, two hours at a stretch, up to the knees in water. When relieved, you had four hours off, and you would huddle up on the firing-step with your feet still in the water, and either smoke or try to get a little sleep.
Behold the Trench Mortar Officer and his gang of pariahs creeping stealthily along in the lee of the parados, just as dawn breaks, in the section of trench occupied by No. 10 Platoon. For the moment they are unheeded, for the platoon are "standing-to," and the men are lined along the firing-step, with their backs to the conspirators.
Shells began to sweep the trench where the Hotwater Guards lay, to batter at their parapet, and to prepare a curtain of fire along their front. Everton lay and listened to the appalling clamor; but when the word was passed round to get ready, he rose to his feet and climbed to the firing-step without any overpowering sense of fear.
Next moment gongs were clanging up and down the trench, and men were tearing open the satchels which contained their anti-gas helmets. Major Wagstaffe, who had been sent up from Battalion Headquarters to take general charge of affairs in the firing-trench, buttoned the bottom edge of his helmet well inside his collar and clambered up on the firing-step to take stock of the position.
The other moved slightly on the firing-step, leaving a little room, and Toffee took this as an invitation to sit down. Halliday continued to speak in low tones that were not likely to pass beyond his listener's ear. "Don't you get scared," he said. "You've nothing much to be scared about." He threw a little emphasis, and Toffee fancied a little envy, into the "you."
Boxes of bombs everywhere; stands for rifles on the firing-step, which held them rigidly when they fired rifle grenades; and every now and then a row of grey-painted rockets with a red top, which in case of emergency send up the coloured flares that give the S.O.S. signals to those behind. Also men: men who slept and ate and shaved and wrote and got bored. A poor show is trench warfare!
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