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The time was mostly spent in training, which consisted then of trench digging and occasionally practising a "trench to trench" attack, with the assistance of gunners and telephonists, about whose duties we had learnt almost nothing in England. General Smith Dorrien came to watch one of these practices, and, though he passed one or two criticisms, seemed very pleased with our efforts.
Asia, as yet, with her eight hundred and fifty million people, has fewer telephones than Philadelphia, and three-fourths of them are in the tiny island of Japan. The Japanese were enthusiastic telephonists from the first. They had a busy exchange in Tokio in 1883.
The Major, attended by his trumpeter, and followed by the Battery staff of range-takers, director-men, telephonists, and the serjeant-major, inaugurated a sinuous procession into the uneven, rutted track leading to the side-road. Then the guns one by one wheeled to the right, the horses' hoofs stamping into the damp ground as they turned, and became part of the procession.
How to get the benefits of organization without its losses, to become strong without losing quickness, to become systematic without losing the dash and dare of earlier days, to develop the working force into an army of high-speed specialists without losing the bird's-eye view of the whole situation, these are the riddles of the new type, for which the telephonists of the next generation must find the answers.
At first sight they seemed to outnumber the Nicaraguan army mechanicians, chauffeurs, armourers, motorcyclists, telephonists, wireless operators, Red Cross stretcher bearers, clerks! Afterward I learned they totalled seventy-odd, and that all of them were glad to be connected with the American Escadrille. In their hangars stood our trim little Nieuports.
The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths. At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause.
The unfortunate telephonists off duty had to live and sleep in it. The O.P. was a cramped, little, stinking place at the far end of the tunnel, shared with the Italians, undoubtedly visible and well known to the enemy, and with practically no view. The Major, by his usual skilful diplomacy, soon arranged that we should man Claud permanently, but Ascot never.
When I acted as Second in Command, as was more usual, my nights were spent in the centre of the firing line, with excellent telephonists like Hoyle or Clavering close to me, but the nights were usually quiet, and indeed it was not until the middle of September that the Turks showed any symptoms of the offensive spirit.
At this moment Joey returned from the outhouse concealing the telephonists with instructions that we were to proceed to the field, where the battalion was dug in at once. "We take the old road we have taken for years; For you cannot cut corners in war, it appears."
A twelve-inch shell also burst very close to the Battery's Mess, killing a number of Italian telephonists next door. Throughout these days, periods of very heavy firing alternated with periods of comparative quiet. On the 25th a party of nearly thirty British officers and men, a procession of two cars, three side-cars and twelve motor bicycles, went up Podgora Hill.
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