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A short distance outside the town I came upon the gun positions, and crossing a field or rather shall I say a mud-pond, for the mud very nearly reached my knees I selected a point of vantage at one side of a hedge which ran at right angles to the gun-pits.
The fight swayed about round the pill-boxes, disused gun-pits and fortified farms which studded the countryside. Each one of these had to be taken separately; the pill-boxes in particular had to be rushed by bombers, who crept up and threw their bombs through the loopholes, which meanwhile were silenced by continuous machine-gun fire.
It was difficult to believe that the terrible explosions which resulted were caused by a shell lighter than our 18 pounders, whose shrapnel burst with an almost inaudible 'pip. Practically the only retaliation indulged in by the Germans was to shell our batteries as they were getting into their gun-pits, though without serious damage.
As light began to dawn it was impossible to show oneself for a moment on the open top. The furthest range was not over 300 yards, and the top of a helmet, the corner of an arm, was sufficient aim for those deadly marksmen. Unable to stand against the fire, the Light Horse withdrew behind the crest of the hill, whilst small parties continued a desperate defence from the two big gun-pits.
Perhaps this isn't logical, but you must take the world as you find it. I had expected you to learn more in the army than you seem to have picked up. Did you imagine that your promotion depended altogether upon your planning trenches and gun-pits well?" "That kind of thing is going to count in the new armies," Dick replied.
They were jerking at their guns, rapidly turning them around, for the nests had been masked and the muzzles of the guns pointed down into the valley at the foot of Hill No. 223, to sweep it when the Eighty-Second Division came out into the open. Some of the Germans in the gun-pits, using rifles, shot at York. The bullets "burned his face as they passed."
Such newspapers and documents and histories as survive from this period all tell one universal story of towns and cities with the food supply interrupted and their streets congested with starving unemployed; of crises in administration and states of siege, of provisional Governments and Councils of Defence, and, in the cases of India and Egypt, insurrectionary committees taking charge of the re-arming of the population, of the making of batteries and gun-pits, of the vehement manufacture of airships and flying-machines.
Instead they are tucked away in gullies and leafy glens and excavated gun-pits, and their muzzles, instead of frowning down on the enemy from an eminence, stare blindly skyward from behind a wall of hills or mountains.
Then about a hundred Germans rushed forward and started bombing the gun-pits, and some of our men came up. I saw about a dozen of them marched off as prisoners." "You are quite sure Major Harville was killed?" asked the colonel quietly. "Yes, sir; he fell right in my gun-pit." We all stood silent, looking on the ground. Poor Harville!
Still more monstrous guns came crawling up, and in place of the old battery of 60-pounders, the orchard at the western outskirts of Sailly, in the angle of the Bayencourt road, harboured two 15-inch howitzers. Gun-pits and enormous new dugouts were constructed in Hébuterne.
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