building catching light."
The two had their drink and prepared to move again.

"Time we were off, I suppose," said the first. "Our lot must be getting
ready to take the road presently, and we ought to be there."

So they moved and dodged through the quiet streets, with the shells
still whooping overhead and bursting noisily in different parts of the
town. On their way they entered a shop to buy some slabs of chocolate.
The shop was empty when they entered, but a few stout raps on the
counter brought a woman, pale-faced but volubly chattering, up a ladder
and through a trapdoor in the shop-floor. She served them while the
shells still moaned overhead, talking rapidly, apologizing for keeping
them waiting, and explaining that for the children's sake she always
went down into the cellar when the shelling commenced, wishing them, as
they gathered up their parcels and left, "bonne chance," and making for
the trap-door and the ladder as they closed the shop-door.

About the main streets there were few signs of the shells' work, except
here and there a litter of fragments tossed over the roofs and sprayed
across the road. But, passing through a small side square, the two
officers saw something more of the effect of "direct hits." In the
square was parked a number of ambulance wagons, and over a building at
the side floated a huge Red Cross flag. Eight or nine shells had been
dropped in and around the square. Where they had fallen were huge round
holes, each with a scattered fringe of earth and cobble-stones and
broken pavement. The trees lining the square showed big white patches
on their trunks where the bark had been sliced by flying fragments,
branches broken, hanging and dangling, or holding out jagged white
stumps. Leaves and twigs and branches were littered about the square
and heaped thick under the trees. The brick walls of many of the houses
round were pitted and pocked and scarred by the shell fragments. The
face of one house was marked by a huge splash, with solid center and a
ragged-edged outline of radiating jerky rays, reminding one immediately
of a famous ink-maker's advertisement. The bricks had taken the
impression of the explosion's splash exactly as paper would take the
ink's. Practically every window in the square had been broken, and in
the case of the splash-marked house, blown in, sash and frame complete.
One ambulance wagon lay a torn and splintered wreck, and pieces of it
were flung wide to the four corners of the square. Another was
overturned, with broken wheels collapsed under it, and in the Red Cross
canvas tilts of others gaped huge tears and rents.

At one spot a pool of blood spread wide across the pavement, and still
dripping and running sluggishly and thickly into and along the stone
gutter, showed where at least one shell had caught more than brick and
stone and tree, although now the square was deserted and empty of life.

And even as the two hurriedly skirted the place another shell hurtled
over, tripped on the top edge of a roof across the square and exploded
with an appalling clatter and burst of noise. The roof vanished in a
whirlwind of smoke and dust, and the officers jumped from the doorway
where they had flung themselves crouching, and finished their passage
of the square at a run.

"Hottish corner," said one, as they slowed to a walk some distance
away.

"Silly fools," growled the other. "What do they want to hoist that huge
Red Cross flag up there for, where any airman can see it? Fairly asking
for it, I call it."

When they came to the outskirts of the town they found rather more
signs of life. People were hanging about their doorways and the shops,
fewer windows were shuttered, fewer faces peeped from the tiny grated
windows of the cellars. And up the center of the road, with lordly
calm, marched three Highlanders. The smooth swing of their kilts, their
even, unhurried step, the shoulders well back, and the elbows a shade
outturned, the bonnets cocked to a precisely same angle on the upheld
heads, all bespoke either an amazing ignorance of, or a bland
indifference to, the bombardment. Their march was stopped by a sentry,
who shouted to them and moved out from the pavement. Some sort of
argument was going on as the officers approached, and in passing they
heard the finish of it.

"You were pit there tae warn folk," a Highlander was saying. "Weel,
ye've dune that, so we'll awa on oor road. We're nae fonder o' shells
than y'are yersel. But we'd look bonnie, wouldn't we, t' be tellin' the
Cameron lads we promised to meet, that we were feared for a bit
shellin'...."

And after they had passed, the officers looked back and saw the three
Scots swinging their kilts and swaggering imperturbably on to the town,
and their meeting with the "Cameron lads."

There were no more shells, but that afternoon a Taube paid another of
its frequent visits and vigorously bombed the railway station again,
driving the inhabitants back once more to the inadequate shelter of
their cellars and basements. And yet, as the same two officers marched
with their battalion through the town towards the firing-line that
evening, they found the streets quite normally bustling and astir, and
there seemed to be no lack of light in the shops and houses and about
the streets. Here and there as they passed, children stood stiffly to
attention and gravely saluted the battalion, young women and old turned
to call a cheery "Bonne Chance" to the soldiers, to smile bravely and
wave farewells to them.

"Plucky bloomin' lot, ain't they, Bill?" said one man, and blew a kiss
to three girls waving from a window.

"I takes off my 'at to them," said his mate. "What wi' Jack Johnsons
and airyplane bombs, you might expec' the population to have emigrated
in a bunch. The Frenchmen is a plucky enough crowd, but the women--My
Lord."

"Airyplanes every other day," said the first man. "But I don't notice
any darkened streets and white-painted kerbs; and we don't 'ear the
inhabitants shrieking about protection from air raids, or 'Where's the
anti-aircraft guns?' or 'Who's responsible for air defense?' or 'A baa
the Government that don't a baa the air raids!' 'say la gerr,' says
they, and shrugs their shoulders, and leaves it go at that."

They were in a darker side-street now, and the glare of the burning
house shone red in the sky over the roof tops. "Somebody's 'appy 'ome
gone west," remarked one man, and a mouth-organ in the ranks answered,
with cheerful sarcasm, "Keep the Home Fires Burning!"



THE SIGNALERS


_"It is reported that_ ... "--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.


The "it" and the "that" which were reported, and which the despatch
related in another three or four lines, concerned the position of a
forward line of battle, but have really nothing to do with this
account, which aims only at relating something of the method by which
"it was reported" and the men whose particular work was concerned only
with the report as a report, a string of words, a jumble of letters, a
huddle of Morse dots and dashes.

The Signaling Company in the forward lines was situated in a very damp
and very cold cellar of a half-destroyed house. In it were two or three
tables commandeered from upstairs or from some houses around. That one
was a rough deal kitchen table, and that another was of polished wood,
with beautiful inlaid work and artistic curved and carven legs, the
spoils of some drawing-room apparently, was a matter without the
faintest interest to the signalers who used them. To them a table was a
table, no more and no less, a thing to hold a litter of papers, message
forms, telephone gear, and a candle stuck in a bottle. If they had
stopped to consider the matter, and had been asked, they would probably
have given a dozen of the delicate inlaid tables for one of the rough
strong kitchen ones. There were three or four chairs about the place,
just as miscellaneous in their appearance as the tables. But beyond the
tables and chairs there was no furniture whatever, unless a scanty heap
of wet straw in one corner counts as furniture, which indeed it might
well do since it counted as a bed.

There were fully a dozen men in the room, most of them orderlies for
the carrying of messages to and from the telephonists. These men came
and went continually. Outside it had been raining hard for the greater
part of the day, and now, getting on towards midnight, the drizzle
still held and the trenches and fields about the signalers' quarters
were running wet, churned into a mass of gluey chalk-and-clay mud. The
orderlies coming in with messages were daubed thick with the wet mud
from boot-soles to shoulders, often with their puttees and knees and
thighs dripping and running water as if they had just waded through a
stream. Those who by the carrying of a message had just completed a
turn of duty, reported themselves, handed over a message perhaps,
slouched wearily over to the wall farthest from the door, dropped on
the stone floor, bundled up a pack or a haversack, or anything else
convenient for a pillow, lay down and spread a wet mackintosh over
them, wriggled and composed their bodies into the most comfortable, or
rather the least uncomfortable possible position, and in a few minutes
were dead asleep.

It was nothing to them that every now and again the house above them
shook and quivered to the shock of a heavy shell exploding somewhere on
the ground round the house, that the rattle of rifle fire dwindled away
at times to separate and scattered shots, brisked up again and rose to
a long roll, the devil's tattoo of the machine guns rattling through it
with exactly the sound a boy makes running a stick rapidly along a
railing. The bursting shells and scourging rifle fire, sweeping machine
guns, banging grenades and bombs were all affairs with which the
Signaling Company in the cellar had no connection. For the time being
the men in a row along the wall were as unconcerned in the progress of
the battle as if they were safely and comfortably asleep in London.
Presently any or all of them might be waked and sent out into the
flying death and dangers of the battlefield, but in the meantime their
immediate and only interest was in getting what sleep they could. Every
once in a while the signalers' sergeant would shout for a man, go
across to the line and rouse one of the sleepers; then the awakened man
would sit up and blink, rise and listen to his instructions, nod and
say, "Yes, Sergeant! All right, Sergeant!" when these were completed,
pouch his message, hitch his damp mackintosh about him and button it
close, drag heavily across the stone floor and vanish into the darkness
of the stone-staired passage.

His journey might be a long or a short one, he might only have to find
a company commander in the trenches one or two hundred yards away, he
might on the other hand have a several hours' long trudge ahead of him,
a bewildering way to pick through the darkness across a maze of fields
and a net-work of trenches, over and between the rubble heaps that
represented the remains of a village, along roads pitted with all sorts
of blind traps in the way of shell holes, strings of barbed wire,
overturned carts, broken branches of trees, flung stones and beams; and
always, whether his journey was a short one or a long, he would move in
an atmosphere of risk, with sudden death or searing pain passing him by
at every step, and waiting for him, as he well knew, at the next step
and the next and every other one to his journey's end.

Each man who took his instructions and pocketed his message and walked
up the cellar steps knew that he might never walk down them again, that
he might not take a dozen paces from them before the bullet found him.
He knew that its finding might come in black dark and in the middle of
an open field, that it might drop him there and leave him for the
stretcher-bearers to find some time, or for the burying party to lift
any time. Each man who carried out a message was aware that he might
never deliver it, that when some other hand did so, and the message was
being read, he might be past all messages, lying stark and cold in the
mud and filth with the rain beating on his gray unheeding face; or, on
the other hand, that he might be lying warm and comfortable in the
soothing ease of a bed in the hospital train, swaying gently and lulled
by the song of the flying wheels, the rock and roll of the long
compartment, swinging at top speed down the line to the base and the
hospital ship and home. An infinity of possibilities lay between the
two extremes. They were undoubtedly the two extremes: the death that
each man hoped to evade, the wound whose painful prospect held no
slightest terror but only rather the deep satisfaction of a task
performed, of an escape from death at the cheap price of a few days' or
weeks' pain, or even a crippled limb or a broken body.

A man forgot all these things when he came down the cellar steps and
crept to a corner to snatch what sleep he could, but remembered them
again only when he was wakened and sent out into their midst, and into
all the toils and terrors the others had passed, or were to go into or
even then were meeting.

The signalers at the instruments, the sergeants who gathered them in
and sent them forth, gave little or no thought to the orderlies. These
men were hardly more than shadows, things which brought them long
screeds to be translated to the tapping keys, hands which would stretch
into the candle-light and lift the messages that had just "buzzed" in
over their wires. The sergeant thought of them mostly as a list of
names to be ticked off one by one in a careful roster as each man did
his turn of duty, went out, or came back and reported in. And the man
who sent messages these men bore may never have given a thought to the
hands that would carry them, unless perhaps to wonder vaguely whether
the message could get through from so and so to such and such, from
this map square to that, and if the chance of the messages getting
through--the message you will note, not the messenger--seemed extra
doubtful, orders might be given to send it in duplicate or triplicate,
to double or treble the chances of its arriving.

The night wore on, the orderlies slept and woke, stumbled in and out;
the telephonists droned out in monotonous voices to the telephone, or
"buzzed" even more monotonous strings of longs and shorts on the
"buzzer." And in the open about them, and all unheeded by them, men
fought, and suffered wounds and died, or fought on in the scarce lesser
suffering of cold and wet and hunger.

In the signalers' room all the fluctuations of the fight were
translated from the pulsing fever, the human living tragedies and
heroisms, the violent hopes and fears and anxieties of the battle line,
to curt cold words, to scribbled letters on a message form. At times
these messages were almost meaningless to them, or at least their red
tragedy was unheeded. Their first thought when a message was handed in
for transmission, usually their first question when the signaler at the
other end called to take a message, was whether the message was a long
one or a short one. One telephonist was handed an urgent message to
send off, saying that bombs were running short in the forward line and
that further supplies were required at the earliest possible moment,
that the line was being severely bombed and unless they had the means
to reply must be driven out or destroyed. 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. It was not
that he did not understand the meaning; he himself had known a line
bombed out before now, the trenches rent and torn apart, the shattered
limbs and broken bodies of the defenders, the horrible ripping crash of
the bombs, the blinding flame, the numbing shock, the smoke and reek
and noise of the explosions; but though all these things were known to
him, the words "bombed out" meant no more now than nine letters of the
alphabet and the maddening stupidity of the man at the other end, who
would misunderstand the sound and meaning of "bombed" and had to have
it in time-consuming letter-by-letter spelling.

When he had sent that message, he took off and wrote down one or two
others from the signaling station he was in touch with. His own
station, it will be remembered, was close up to the forward firing
line, a new firing line which marked the limits of the advance made
that morning. The station he was connected with was back in rear of
what, previous to the attack, had been the British forward line.
Between the two the thin insignificant thread of the telephone wire ran
twisting across the jumble of the trenches of our old firing line, the
neutral ground that had lain between the trenches, and the other maze
of trench, dug-out, and bomb-proof shelter pits that had been captured
from the enemy. Then in the middle of sending a message, the wire went
dead, gave no answer to repeated calls on the "buzzer." The sergeant,
called to consultation, helped to overlook and examine the instrument.
Nothing could be found wrong with it, but to make quite sure the fault
was not there, a spare instrument was coupled on to a short length of
wire between it and the old one. 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 situation was the more serious, inasmuch
as this was the only connecting line for a considerable distance along
the new front. A corporal and two men took a spare instrument and a
coil of wire, and set out on their dangerous journey.

The break of course had been reported to the O.C., and after that there
was nothing more for the signaler at the dead instrument to do, except
to listen for the buzz that would come back from the repair party as
they progressed along the line, tapping in occasionally to make sure
that they still had connection with the forward station, their getting
no reply at the same time from the rear station being of course
sufficient proof that they had not passed the break.

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.

When the signaler had time to look about him, to light a cigarette and
to listen to the uproar of battle that filtered down the cellar steps
and through the closed door, he spoke to the sergeant about the noise,
and the sergeant agreed with him that it was getting louder, which
meant either that the fight was getting hotter or coming closer. The
answer to their doubts came swiftly to their hands in the shape of a
note from the O.C., with a message borne by the orderly that it was to
be sent through anyhow or somehow, but at once.

Now the O.C., be it noted, had already had a report that the telephone
wire was cut; but he still scribbled his note, sent his message, and
thereafter put the matter out of his mind. He did not know how or in
what fashion the message would be sent; but he did know the Signaling
Company, and that was sufficient for him.

In this he was doing nothing out of the usual. There are many
commanders who do the same thing, and this, if you read it aright, is a
compliment to the signaling companies beyond all the praise of General
Orders or the sweet flattery of the G.O.C. despatch--the men who sent
the messages put them out of their mind as soon as they were written
and handed to an orderly with a curt order, "Signaling company to send
that."

You at home who slip a letter into the pillar box, consider it,
allowing due time for its journey, as good as delivered at the other
end; by so doing you pay an unconscious compliment to all manners and
grades of men, from high salaried managers down to humble porters and
postmen. But the somewhat similar compliment that is paid by the men
who send messages across the battlefield is paid in the bulk to one
little select circle; to the animal brawn and blood, the spiritual
courage and devotion, the bodies and brains, the pluck and
perseverance, the endurance, the grit and the determination of the
signaling companies.

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. His quick glance through the note had told
him, even without the O.C.'s message, that it was to the last degree
urgent that the message should go back and be delivered at once and
without fail; therefore he sent three messengers, simply because three
men trebled the chances of the message getting through without delay.
If one man dropped, there were two to go on; if two fell, the third
would still carry on; if he fell--well, after that the matter was
beyond the sergeant's handling; he must leave it to the messenger to
find another man or means to carry on the message.

The telephonist had scribbled a copy of the note to keep by him in case
the wire was mended and the message could be sent through after the
messengers started and before they reached the other end. The three
received their instructions, drew their wet coats about their shivering
shoulders, relieved their feelings in a few growled sentences about the
dog's life a man led in that company, and departed into the wet night.

The sergeant came back, re-read the message and discussed it with the
signaler. It said: "Heavy attack is developing and being pressed
strongly on our center a-a-a.[Footnote: Three a's indicate a full
stop.] Our losses have been heavy and line is considerably weakened
a-a-a. Will hold on here to the last but urgently request that strong
reinforcements be sent up if the line is to be maintained a-a-a.
Additional artillery support would be useful a-a-a."

"Sounds healthy, don't it?" said the sergeant reflectively. The
signaler nodded gloomily and listened apprehensively to the growing
sounds of battle. Now that his mind was free from first thoughts of
telephonic worries, he had time to consider outside matters. For nearly
ten minutes the two men listened, and talked in short sentences, and
listened again. The rattle of rifle fire was sustained and unbroken,
and punctuated liberally at short intervals by the boom of exploding
grenades and bombs. Decidedly the whole action was heavier--or coming
back closer to them.

The sergeant was moving across the door to open it and listen when a
shell struck the house above them. The building shook violently, down
to the very flags of the stone floor; from overhead, after the first
crash, there came a rumble of falling masonry, the splintering cracks
of breaking wood-work, the clatter and rattle of cascading bricks and
tiles. A shower of plaster grit fell from the cellar roof and settled
thick upon the papers littered over the table. The sergeant halted
abruptly with his hand on the cellar door, three or four of the
sleepers stirred restlessly, one woke for a minute sufficiently to
grumble curses and ask "what the blank was that"; the rest slept on
serene and undisturbed. The sergeant stood there until the last sounds
of falling rubbish had ceased. "A shell," he said, and drew a deep
breath. "Plunk into upstairs somewhere."

The signaler made no answer. He was quite busy at the moment
rearranging his disturbed papers and blowing the dust and grit off
them.

A telephonist at another table commenced to take and write down a
message. It came from the forward trench on the left, and merely said
briefly that the attack on the center was spreading to them and that
they were holding it with some difficulty. The message was sent up to
the O.C. "Whoever the O.C. may be," as the sergeant said softly. "If
the Colonel was upstairs when that shell hit, there's another O.C. now,
most like." But the Colonel had escaped that shell and sent a message
back to the left trench to hang on, and that he had asked for
reenforcements.

"He did ask," said the sergeant grimly, "but when he's going to get 'em
is a different pair o' shoes. It'll take those messengers most of an
hour to get there, even if they dodge all the lead on the way."

As the minutes passed, it became more and more plain that the need for
reenforcements was growing more and more urgent. The sergeant was
standing now at the open door of the cellar, and the noise of the
conflict swept down and clamored and beat about them.

"Think I'll just slip up and have a look round," said the sergeant. "I
shan't be long."

When he had gone, the signaler rose and closed the door; it was cold
enough, as he very sensibly argued, and his being able to hear the
fighting better would do nothing to affect its issue. Just after came
another call on his instrument, and the repair party told him they had
crossed the neutral ground, had one man wounded in the arm, that he was
going on with them, and they were still following up the wire. The
message ceased, and the telephonist, leaning his elbows on the table
and his chin on his hands, was almost asleep before he realized it. He
wakened with a jerk, lit another cigarette, and stamped up and down the
room trying to warm his numbed feet.

First one orderly and then another brought in messages to be sent to
the other trenches, and the signaler held them a minute and gathered
some more particulars as to how the fight was progressing up there. The
particulars were not encouraging. We must have lost a lot of men, since
the whole place was clotted up with casualties that kept coming in
quicker than the stretcher-bearers could move them. The rifle-fire was
hot, the bombing was still hotter, and the shelling was perhaps the
hottest and most horrible of all. Of the last the signaler hardly
required an account; the growling thumps of heavy shells exploding,
kept sending little shivers down the cellar walls, the shiver being,
oddly enough, more emphatic when the wail of the falling shell ended in
a muffled thump that proclaimed the missile "blind" or "a dud." Another
hurried messenger plunged down the steps with a note written by the
adjutant to say the colonel was severely wounded and had sent for the
second in command to take over. Ten more dragging minutes passed, and
now the separate little shivers and thrills that shook the cellar walls
had merged and run together. The rolling crash of the falling shells
and the bursting of bombs came close and fast one upon another, and at
intervals the terrific detonation of an aerial torpedo dwarfed for the
moment all the other sounds.

By now the noise was so great that even the sleepers began to stir, and
one or two of them to wake. One sat up and asked the telephonist,
sitting idle over his instrument, what was happening. He was told
briefly, and told also that the line was "disc." He expressed
considerable annoyance at this, grumbling that he knew what it
meant--more trips in the mud and under fire to take the messages the
wire should have carried.

"Do you think there's any chance of them pushing in the line and
rushing this house?" he asked. The telephonist didn't know. "Well,"
said the man and lay down again. "It's none o' my dashed business if
they do anyway. I only hope we're tipped the wink in time to shunt out
o' here; I've no particular fancy for sitting in a cellar with the
Boche cock-shying their bombs down the steps at me." Then he shut his
eyes and went to sleep again.

The morsed key signal for his own company buzzed rapidly on the
signaler's telephone and he caught the voice of the corporal who had
taken out the repair party. They had found the break, the corporal
said, and were mending it. He should be through--he was through--could
he hear the other end? The signaler could hear the other end calling
him and he promptly tapped off the answering signal and spoke into his
instrument. He could hear the morse signals on the buzzer plain enough,
but the voice was faint and indistinct. The signaler caught the
corporal before he withdrew his tap-in and implored him to search along
and find the leakage.

"It's bad enough," he said, "to get all these messages through by
voice. I haven't a dog's chance of doing it if I have to buzz each
one."

The rear station spoke again and informed him that he had several
urgent messages waiting. The forward signaler replied that he also had
several messages, and one in particular was urgent above all others.

"The blanky line is being pushed in," he said. "No, it isn't pushed in
yet--I didn't say it--I said being pushed in--being--being, looks like
it will be pushed in--got that? The O.C. has' stopped one' and the
second has taken command. This message I want you to take is shrieking
for reenforcements--what? I can't hear--no I didn't say anything about
horses--I did _not_. Reenforcements I said; anyhow, take this message
and get it through quick."

He was interrupted by another terrific crash, a fresh and louder
outburst of the din outside; running footsteps clattered and leaped
down the stairs, the door flung open and the sergeant rushed in
slamming the door violently behind him. He ran straight across to the
recumbent figures and began violently to shake and kick them into
wakefulness.

"Up with ye!" he said, "every man. If you don't wake quick now, you'll
maybe not have the chance to wake at all."

The men rolled over and sat and stood up blinking stupidly at him and
listening in amazement to the noise outside.

"Rouse yourselves," he cried. "Get a move on. The Germans are almost on
top of us. The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He
seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he
said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if
you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that
grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out
there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' help block up the
door."

Through the din that followed, the telephonist fought to get his
message through; he had to give up an attempt to speak it while a
hatchet, a crowbar, and a pickaxe were noisily at work breaking out a
fresh exit from the back of the cellar, and even after that work had
been completed, it was difficult to make himself heard. He completed
the urgent message for reenforcements at last, listened to some
confused and confusing comments upon it, and then made ready to take
some messages from the other end.

"You'll have to shout," he said, "no, shout--speak loud, because I
can't 'ardly 'ear myself think--no, 'ear myself think. Oh, all sorts,
but the shelling is the worst, and one o' them beastly airyale
torpedoes. All right, go ahead."

The earpiece receiver strapped tightly over one ear, left his right
hand free to use a pencil, and as he took the spoken message word by
word, he wrote it on the pad of message forms under his hand. Under the
circumstances it is hardly surprising that the message took a good deal
longer than a normal time to send through, and while he was taking it,
the signaler's mind was altogether too occupied to pay any attention to
the progress of events above and around him. But now the sergeant came
back and warned him that he had better get his things ready and put
together as far as he could, in case they had to make a quick and
sudden move.

"The game's up, I'm afraid," he said gloomily, and took a note that was
brought down by another orderly. "I thought so," he commented, as he
read it hastily and passed it to the other signaler. "It's a message
warning the right and left flanks that we can't hold the center any
longer, and that they are to commence falling back to conform to our
retirement at 3.20 _ac emma_, which is ten minutes from now."

Over their heads the signalers could hear tramping scurrying feet, the
hammering out of loopholes, the dragging thump and flinging down of
obstacles piled up as an additional defense to the rickety walls. Then
there were more hurrying footsteps, and presently the jarring
_rap-rap-rap_ of a machine gun immediately over their heads.

"That's done it!" said the sergeant. "We've got no orders to move, but
I'm going to chance it and establish an alternative signaling station
in one of the trenches somewhere behind here. This cellar roof is too
thin to stop an ordinary Fizzbang, much less a good solid Crump, and
that machine gun upstairs is a certain invitation to sudden death and
the German gunners to down and out us."

He moved towards the new opening that had been made in the wall of the
cellar, scrambled up it and disappeared. All the signalers lifted their
attention from their instruments at the same moment and sat listening
to the fresh note that ran through the renewed and louder clamor and
racket. The signaler who was in touch with the rear station called them
and began to tell them what was happening.

"We're about all in, I b'lieve," he said. "Five minutes ago we passed
word to the flanks to fall back in ten minutes. What? Yes, it's thick.
I don't know how many men we've lost hanging on, and I suppose we'll
lose as many again taking back the trench we're to give up. What's
that? No. I don't see how reenforcements could be here yet. How long
ago you say you passed orders for them to move up? An hour ago! That's
wrong, because the messengers can't have been back--telephone message?
That's a lot less than an hour ago. I sent it myself no more than half
an hour since. Oo-oo! did you get that bump? Dunno, couple o' big
shells or something dropped just outside. I can 'ardly 'ear you.
There's a most almighty row going on all round. They must be charging,
I think, or our front line's fallen back, because the rifles is going
nineteen to the dozen, a-a-ah! They're getting stronger too, and it
sounds like a lot more bombs going; hold on, there's that blighting
maxim again."

He stopped speaking while upstairs the maxim clattered off belt after
belt of cartridges. The other signalers were shuffling their feet
anxiously and looking about them.

"Are we going to stick it here?" said one. "Didn't the sergeant say
something about 'opping it?"

"If he did," said the other, "he hasn't given any orders that I've
heard. I suppose he'll come back and do that, and we've just got to
carry on till then."

The men had to shout now to make themselves heard to each other above
the constant clatter of the maxim and the roar of rifle fire. By now
they could hear, too, shouts and cries and the trampling rush of many
footsteps. The signaler spoke into his instrument again.

"I think the line's fallen back," he said. "I can hear a heap o' men
running about there outside, and now I suppose us here is about due to
get it in the neck."

There was a scuffle, a rush, and a plunge, and the sergeant shot down
through the rear opening and out into the cellar.

"The flank trenches!" he shouted. "Quick! Get on to them--right and
left flank--tell them they're to stand fast. Quick, now, give them that
first. Stand fast; do not retire."

The signalers leaped to their instruments, buzzed off the call, and
getting through, rattled their messages off.

"Ask them," said the sergeant anxiously. "Had they commenced to
retire." He breathed a sigh of relief when the answers came. "No," that
the message had just stopped them in time.

"Then," he said, "you can go ahead now and tell them the order to
retire is cancelled, that the reenforcements have arrived, that they're
up in our forward line, and we can hold it good--oh!"

He paused and wiped his wet forehead; "you," he said, turning to the
other signaler, "tell them behind there the same thing."

"How in thunder did they manage it, sergeant?" said the perplexed
signaler. "They haven't had time since they got my message through."

"No," said the sergeant, "but they've just had time since they got
mine."

"Got yours?" said the bewildered signaler.

"Yes, didn't I tell you?" said the sergeant. "When I went out for a
look round that time, I found an artillery signaler laying out a new
line, and I got him to let me tap in and send a message through his
battery to headquarters."

"You might have told me," said the aggrieved signaler. "It would have
saved me a heap of sweat getting that message through." After he had
finished his message to the rear station he spoke reflectively: "Lucky
thing you did get through," he said. "'Twas a pretty close shave. The
O.C. should have a 'thank you' for you over it."

"I don't suppose," answered the sergeant, "the O.C. will ever know or
ever trouble about it; he sent a message to the signaling company to
send through--and it was sent through. There's the beginning and the
end of it."

And as he said, so it was; or rather the end of it was in those three
words that appeared later in the despatch: "It is reported."



CONSCRIPT COURAGE


You must know plenty of people--if you yourself are not one of
them--who hold out stoutly against any military compulsion or
conscription in the belief that the "fetched" man can never be the
equal in valor and fighting instinct of the volunteer, can only be a
source of weakness in any platoon, company and regiment. This tale may
throw a new light on that argument.

Gerald Bunthrop was not a conscript in the strict sense of the word,
because when he enlisted no legal form of conscription existed in the
United Kingdom; but he was, as many more have been, a moral conscript,
a man utterly averse to any form of soldiering, much less fighting,
very reluctantly driven into the Army by force of circumstance and
pressure from without himself. Before the War the Army and its ways
were to him a sealed book. Of war he had the haziest ideas compounded
of novels he had read and dimly remembered and mental pictures in a
confused jumble of Charles O'Malley dragoons on spirited charges,
half-forgotten illustrations in the papers of pith-helmeted infantry in
the Boer War, faint boyhood recollections of Magersfontein and the
glumness of the "Black Week"--a much more realistic and vivid
impression of Waterloo as described by Brigadier Gerard--and odd
figures of black Soudanese, of Light Brigade troopers, of Peninsula
red-coats, of Sepoys and bonneted Highlanders in the Mutiny period, and
of Life Guard sentries at Whitehall, lines of fixed bayonets on City
procession routes, and khaki-clad Terriers seen about railway stations
and on bus-tops with incongruous rifles on Saturday afternoons.
Actually, it is not correct to include these living figures in his
vague idea of war. They had to him no connection with anything outside
normal peaceful life, stirred his thoughts to war no more than seeing a
gasbracket would wake him to imaginings of a coalmine or a pit
explosion. His slight conceptions of war, then, were a mere matter of
print and books and pictures, and the first months of this present war
were exactly the same, no more and no less--newspaper paragraphs and
photos and drawings in the weeklies hanging on the bookstalls. He read
about the Retreat and the Advance, skimmed the prophets' forecasts,
gulped the communiques with interest a good deal fainter than he read
the accounts of the football matches or a boxing bout. He expected "our
side" to win of course, and was quite patriotic; was in fact a