the inhabitants called the place "The
Grass Bank." Through it the map showed a lonely little red capillary,
wandering by itself for a quarter of an inch, and fading off into
nothing again. The stout German colonel of the local artillery
group--big guns which barked mostly of nights--having found his forward
observation post knocked in by a small field-gun shell, had come back
and growled like a bear all dinner-time, most inconsequentially, about
the lack of cover from heavy shells in the back areas. His real object
was to abuse the men at the table with him; but one junior Staff
Officer, hankering after promotion, looked round for the best dug-out
site; and caused to be burrowed downwards, from the bottom of a steep
grassy bank which ran half-way across a neighbouring field, four narrow
dark tunnels leading into low square rooms, held up with stout beams,
and all connected with each other. Two were lined with rough bunks on
wooden frames folding against the wall. Another held a table covered
with papers, a telephone switchboard, and four busy clerks. The fourth
was panelled carefully with deal, the ceiling neatly gridironed with
dark stained wood, a cupboard let into a recess with a looking-glass
panel above it, a comfortable bunk with an electric bulb above the
pillow and a telephone by the bedside. The group commander slept there
undisturbed, even when the British suddenly pushed their front forward,
and the Grass Bank began to shake with the thump of 9-inch shells. The
junior Staff Officer wonders why he is a junior Staff Officer still.

The great battle climbed like some slow, devouring monster up one green
slope, down the next, and up the green slopes beyond, clawing on to
green fields, and leaving them behind it a wilderness of pock-marked
slime. One of the many small obstacles, which held up its local progress
for a while, was some sort of nest of Germans behind a certain bank.
Several attacks had been made on it. The Intelligence Officer of an
Australian Brigade followed the Intelligence Officer of an Australian
Battalion on his stomach, for one night, up to the barbed wire; and gave
it as his opinion that the enemy kept his machine-guns in dug-outs at
the bottom of the bank. Later, a wild night of driving rain, and
flashes, and crashes, and black forms struggling in the mud against the
glint of flares on slimy white crater edges, left things still
uncertain.

It was there that Tim Gibbs came in--and Booligal.