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This post wasn't exactly safe. It was a hot corner, shells plunking all around, and the bullets cutting leaves off the trees. Many a time when relieving the signaler at the phone, I had to crawl on my belly like a worm to keep from being hit. "It was an observation post sure enough. That's all the use it was. Just observe all day, but never a message back for our battery to open up.
The night signaler, going off duty, had brought him a telegram from the high commissioner to say that all available military bands were to be lent for the day to the maharajah, and that as many British officers as possible, of all ranks, were to take part in the procession to grace it with official sanctity.
The various letters of the alphabet are indicated by the positions in which the signaler holds his arms. Keeping the arms always forty-five degrees apart, it is possible to read the signals at a considerable distance. Navy signalers have become very efficient with this form of communication, attaining a speed of over fifteen words a minute.
Twice the signaler got a message, the second one being from the forward side of the old neutral ground in what had been the German front line trench; the report said also that fairly heavy fire was being maintained on the open ground. After that there was silence.
The signaler mimicked the whistling sound, and clicked his heels together. "Ha!" he said, "soixante-quinze good, eh?" The captain called to him, and again he revolved the handle and called to the battery. "Garsong," said Robinson, "a plate of swa-song-canned beans, si voo play and serve 'em hot" A German shell dropped again, and again the chorused howls and laughter of the Towers marked its fall.
The signaler took that message and sent it through; but his instrument was not working very clearly, and he was a good deal more concerned and his mind was much more fully taken up with the exasperating difficulty of making the signaler at the other end catch word or letter correctly, than it was with all the close packed volume of meaning it contained.
They carried the message perfectly, so with curses of angry disgust the wire was pronounced disconnected, or "disc," as the signaler called it. This meant that a man or men had to be sent out along the line to find and repair the break, and that until this was done, no telephone message could pass between that portion of the forward line and the headquarters in the rear.
The Towers laughed with him, and when the next shell fell there was a general chorus of imitation. The captain called again, the signaler ground the handle and spoke into the telephone. "Fire!" he said, nodding delightedly to the Towers; "boom-boom-boom-boom." Immediately after they heard the loud, harsh, crackling reports of the battery to their rear, and the shells rushed whistling overhead.
The green and red of the life-saver's embroidered badge, the crossed flags of the expert signaler, the white plow of the husbandman, they enlivened the gloom a wee bit, winking up at the safety lamp hooked to his hat-band, as he bent over the illumined reptile.
When the sergeant took his message and glanced through it, he pursed his lips in a low whistle and asked the signaler to copy while he went and roused three messengers.
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