d besomed it bare of life.
Here and there, in ones and twos and little knots and groups, the
Germans strove desperately to push on. They came as far as that deadly
fire belt; and in ones and twos and little knots and groups they stayed
there and died. Supports hurried up and hurled themselves in, and a
spasm of fresh strength and fury lifted the line and heaved it forward.
So far the fire of its fury brought it; and there the hosing shrapnel
met it, swept down and washed it away, and beat it out to the last
spark and the last man.

But from the German trenches another assault was forming, from the
German batteries another squall of shell-fire smote the British line;
and to his horror, the Forward Officer saw his own shells coming slower
and slower, the smoke-bursts growing irregular and slower again. He
leaped down and rushed to the telephone.

Back in the Battery the telephone wires ran into a dug-out that was the
brain-centre of the guns, and from here the Forward Officer's
directions emerged and were translated to the gunners through the
Battery Commander and the Battery Sergeant-Major's megaphone.

All the morning the gunners followed those orders blindly, sluing the
hot gun-muzzles a fraction this way or that, making minute adjustments
on sights and range drums and shell fuses. They could see no glimpse
of the fight, but, more or less accurately, they could follow its
varying fortunes and trace its movements by the orders that came
through to them. When they had to send their shells further back, the
enemy obviously were being pressed back; when the fire had to be
brought closer the enemy were closer. An urgent call for rapid fire
with an increasing range meant our infantry attacking; with a lessening
range, their being attacked.

Occasionally the Battery Commander passed to the Section Commanders
items of news from the Forward Officer, and they in turn told the
'Numbers One' in charge of the guns, and the gun detachments.

Such a message was passed along when the Forward Officer telephoned
news of the heavy pressure on the weakened centre. Every man in the
Battery knew what was expected, and detachment vied with detachment in
the speedy correcting of aim and range, and the rapid service of their
guns. When the order came for a round of 'Battery fire'--which calls
for the guns to fire in their turn from right to left--one gun was a
few seconds late in reporting ready, and every other man at every other