A little farther we see the stooping form of a hooded officer, and
as he raises his hand to his face we see two gold lines on his
sleeve. He, surely, will tell us the way. But he addresses us, and
asks if we have not seen the battery he is looking for. We shall
never get there!
But we do, all the same. We finish up in a field of blackness where
a few lean posts are bristling. We climb up to it, and spread out in
silence. This is the spot.
The placing of us is an undertaking. Four separate times we go
forward and then retire, before the company is regularly echeloned
along the length of the trench to be dug, before an equal interval
is left between each team of one striker and two shovelers. "Incline
three paces more--too much--one pace to the rear. Come, one pace to
the rear--are you deaf?--Halt! There!"
This adjustment is done by the lieutenant and a noncom. of the
Engineers who has sprung up out of the ground. Together or
separately they run along the file and give their muttered orders
into the men s ears as they take them by the arm, sometimes, to
guide them. Though begun in an orderly way, the arrangement
degenerates, thanks to the ill temper of the exhausted men, who must
continually be uprooting themselves from the spot where the
undulating mob is stranded.
"We're in front of the first lines," they whisper round me. "No."
murmur other voices, "we're just behind."
No one knows. The rain still falls, though less fiercely than at
some moments on the march.
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