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"The Secret Service has its fighting-line, too," Barbara replied, "though the war correspondents don't write about it. It never gets a mention in despatches, and Victoria Crosses don't come its way. The newspapers don't publish its casualty list, though you and I know that it's a long one.
For Napoleon at midsummer was mustering a third of a million of men on the banks of the Niemen, while the Russians, with little more than half those numbers as yet available for the fighting-line, had them spread out over an immense space, so as to facilitate those flanking operations on which Phull set such store.
Within the position, behind the copses and undulations, there was ample cover for all troops not employed on the fighting-line; and from the ridge in rear the general could view the field from commanding ground. Shortly after 5 A.M., while the Confederates were still taking up their positions, the Federal columns were seen moving down the heights near the Henry House.
Neither of them took the slightest notice of him. But he was getting used to being carried about and never spoken to, like a piece of furniture. And the Sister entranced him. The Clearing Hospitals were the nearest places to the fighting-line that women could aspire to. He had not seen an English lady since leaving England. And her waist pleased him.
Indeed, one may say that the inclusion of Great Britain in the fighting had given vital assistance to France and Belgium and Russia, had gone some long way to check the mad triumphal rush of the German bully upon her unready enemies, and had assisted in the erection of that barrier of trenches which held the enemy in check; while, beyond the fighting-line, Britain called for her volunteers to form new armies, and France completed the mobilization of her men and made ready to shatter the invader.
Wherever he was, there victory followed our arms; but the odds against us were too heavy. Our men stood in their places and fought to the death; but their limbs grew tired, their arms ached with the strain; they needed rest. All our troops, however, were in the fighting-line, and the royalist attacks never ceased.
The rains did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape death by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the hills and went about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting-line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade Ameera to go away with her mother to the Himalayas.
And every one of those legends told him of battles fought at long odds, without fear as without support; of hospitality catholic as an Arab's; of friendships deep as the sea and steady as the fighting-line; of honour won by hard roads for honour's sake; and of instant and unquestioning devotion to the Regiment the Regiment that claims the lives of all and lives forever.
The long, flat-topped ridge, covered with scattered copses and rough undergrowth, which stands north of the Warrenton-Centreville road, commands the approaches from the south and east, and some five hundred yards below the crest ran the unfinished railroad. Behind the deep cuttings and high embankments the Confederate fighting-line was strongly placed.
I saw them laughing when, for the first time, they tried on the gas-masks which none of us ever left behind when we went near the fighting-line. That horror of war on the western front was new to them.
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