The grey-blue coats of the
line swung round the corner of the village street; they had yet a few
miles before them. Anything more rapid or less in step it would be
difficult to conceive. The guns were off at a right angle down the main
road, making a prodigious clatter, and at the same time appeared two
parties, one of which it was easy to understand, the other not. They
were both parties of sappers. The one party had a great roll of wire on
a drum, and as quick as you could think they were unreeling it, and as
they unreeled it fastening it to eaves, overhanging branches, and to
corners of walls, stretching it out forward. It was the field-telephone.
The other party came along carrying great beams upon their shoulders,
but what they were to do with these beams we did not know.
We followed the tail of the line down into the valley, and all that
morning long and past the food time at midday, and so till the sun
declined in the afternoon, we went with the 38th in its gradual success
from crest to crest. And still the 38th slouched by companies, and mile
after mile with checks and halts, and it never seemed to get either less
or more tired. The men had had twelve hours of it when they came at
last, and we after them, on to the critical position. They had carried
(together with all the line to left and to the right of them) a string
of villages which crowned the crest of a further plateau, and over this
further plateau they were advancing against the main body of the
resistance--the other army corps which was set up against ours, to
simulate an enemy.
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