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Progress is steady, but not exhilarating. The situation appears to be that owing to the terrific artillery bombardment the attacking force will meet with little or no opposition in the German front-line trenches; or second line, for that matter.
Our Battalion Headquarters was located in the St. Quentin Cabaret, about two hundred yards south of Wulverghem and we had a supporting gun, with infantry, at Souvenir Farm and also at a redoubt near by, called "S-5." Our front-line guns were distributed from the Neuve Eglise road to the northern end of our battalion frontage, about "C-3."
A few civilians were scattered through the town, living in the cellars, the rest having fled at the German approach. We were ordered to put our guns in the very front-line trench for the reason that the opposing trenches being so close together, it was impossible for the guns to do justice to themselves without inflicting serious casualties on our own men.
When carrying the food through the communicating trenches to the front-line trenches, he is always supposed to bring to the men the latest news, the latest tale which is going the round of the camp, and anything that may happen to interest them. If he has not got any news he must manufacture and produce some kind of story. It is really necessary for him to be not only a cook but also an author.
There is trouble raging throughout all the world, Mother, and yet these sons of mean fathers must proclaim a beggars' festival in order to add to it! There should be an order of the Government to take all those lazy rascals out of India into France and put them in our front-line that their bodies may be sieves for the machine guns.
We left our motor cars behind us in Arras, for to-day we were to go to a front-line trench, and the climax of my whole trip, so far as I could foresee, was at hand. Johnson and the wee piano had to stay behind, too we could not expect to carry even so tiny an instrument as that into a front-line trench!
In front of me were our front-line trenches, following the line of the little stream which ran into the Douve on the right. On the far side of the stream the ground gently rose in a long slope up to Messines, where you could see a shattered mass of red brick buildings with the old grey tower in the middle.
With a clear right-of-way, their high-power machine swept past ammunition and food trains long strings of powerful motor trucks driving toward the scene of action. They came upon towns and villages in that area known as "behind the lines," where French, American, Belgian and British soldiers were recuperating after hard days and nights in the front-line trenches.
"I wonder if they really mean business this time," surmised that youthful Company Commander, Temporary Captain Bobby Little, to Major Wagstaffe. "It sounds like it," said Wagstaffe, as another salvo of "whizz-bangs" broke like inflammatory surf upon the front-line trenches.
He had held seven services that Sunday, one in a machine-gun company's dugout, with six men; another with a group of a dozen men in a front-line trench; another with several officers in an officers' dugout; another with a battery outfit who were "On Call," expecting orders to send over a few shells; another with several men out in No Man's Land, on the sunny side of an old upturned mass of tree roots; one in a listening-post, and finally this service with a lone sentry at a crossroads.
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