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At present he is meditating a design for painting himself grass-green and climbing a tree thence to take a comprehensive and unobserved survey of the enemy's dispositions. He will do it, too, if he gets a chance! The machine-gunners, also, contrive to chase monotony by methods of their own. Listen to Ayling, concocting his diurnal scheme of frightfulness with a colleague.
Two of them came ahead, carrying a machine gun, followed by a third with a flame-thrower; the others retreated more slowly, firing their rifles to delay pursuit. Cuddling the stock of his carbine to his cheek, he divided a ten-shot burst between the two machine-gunners, then, as a matter of principle, he shot the man with the flame-thrower.
"No they've bin gone some time come on, Sammy." Well, I thought to myself, this IS nice. So I went down with the machine-gunners and in the dead grass just below the gully I found a wounded man: he was shot through the thigh and it had gone clean through both legs. He was bleeding to death quickly, for it had ripped both arteries.
We were all deceived, but by good luck on this occasion no harm was done. Brigade at once sent up three companies and some machine-gunners to support us, so we were all right in the line; but they proved to be too many for the signal communications, which all had to come through Battalion H.Q., and the signallers were worked to death.
To preserve his centre from being pierced and his flanks rolled up, rear-guards eastward of Cambrai were offering the maximum resistance. Most villages, though they passed into our hands nearly intact and in some cases full of civilians, had to be fought for. The German machine-gunners rarely belied their character of fighting to the end.
The Turkish machine-gunners and riflemen in the garden and village were supported by artillery firing from behind the ridge at the back of the village, and although the brigade made repeated efforts to get on, its advance was held up in the early afternoon, and it seemed impossible to take the place by infantry from the south in the clear light of a November afternoon.
Then, when our guns lift and the attack comes over, his machine-gunners appear on the surface, hoist their guns after them with a sort of tackle arrangement, and get to work on a prearranged band of fire. The infantry can't do them in until No Man's Land is crossed, and well, they don't all get across, that's all! However, I have heard rumours " "So have we all," said Colonel Kemp.
Indeed A Battery's forward section, handled first by Dumble and then by Stenson, had boldly harassed the enemy machine-gunners from under 500 yards' range. Dumble had already been recommended for the Military Cross, and Major Bullivant described Stenson's exploits while visiting Brigade Headquarters during the afternoon.
The infantry, while still going methodically forward, were receiving far too much attention to feel comfortable, and Japanese soldiers were putting tufts of grass and leaves in front of their caps to hide the red band, which made an excellent target for riflemen and machine-gunners.
In spite of that tornado of shell-fire which I had seen tearing up the earth, many tunnels were still unbroken, and out of them came masses of German machine-gunners and riflemen, when our infantry rose from their own trenches on that morning of July 1st.
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