  THIS is the last day; to-morrow at dawn we attack. We are still lying hidden in the Boves Woods; though other woods to the rear of us have been bombed and harassed, no shell has fallen here as yet. The enemy doubtless watches this wood for the flash of the guns and, having seen none, has not thought it worth his while to waste ammunition upon it. Our foolhardiness in camping directly under his eyes has certainly paid us, for there is scarcely any other place where we would not have suffered casualties. It’s afternoon; beyond the dim cavernous shadow of these trees the hot August sun is shining. The white chalky hills gleam molten and dazzle one’s eyes with their glare. The valleys, which spread away for miles below us, float tethered in the hazy air. Everything looks tranquil and dreamlike; it is difficult to believe in our own reality and in the reality of our monstrous purpose. Surely we shall wake up to find ourselves safe at home and to laugh at our fantastic imagining that we are soldiers. Yet within a handful of hours all this peacefulness will vanish; the mask of summer quiet will be torn aside and every ridge and rock will belch fire and destruction. The French have dragged their guns into the most daringly inaccessible places; there they lie basking in the fragrance of wild thyme with all the world below them, their muzzles pointed towards the stolen country, waiting for the hour of reckoning to strike. Our men were advised to rest this afternoon and to get as much sleep as possible; but already the fever of excitement is in their blood. Many of them have gone down behind the hill to bathe and are washing their clothes in the river. One of the amazing spectacles of our place of hiding is the impassive aspect of the eastern slope as compared with the stirring life which goes on on its western side. All our preparations are completed; there is nothing more that can be done until darkness has gathered. It was on the morning of August 5th that the battery marched into those woods. The following night was spent in carrying up ammunition and sand-bags to the gun-position. We hid them in ditches on either side of the Gentelles-Domart Road and beneath the trees of the orchard. Last night we completed the stocking of the position with ammunition and dragged in the guns. The guns we also hid in the orchard, covering them with branches to break up their outline, so that they might not arouse suspicion in the mind of the enemy. The work was very exhausting and slow on account of the congestion of the traffic. The return from the Derby was nothing to it. It was like being caught in the procession of the Lord Mayor’s Show. In the case of a break-down in front, it was impossible to swing out and get forward. Men stood elbow to elbow and vehicles hub to hub. Limbers and led animals were packed solid, the one stream moving up and the other returning. In order to get the work done every horse and man had to make at least two journeys. The main ammunition-dumps, at which the limbers were loaded, were from two to three miles away; when one had been emptied another had to be located in the darkness. To forward-positions, such as ours, there are only two highways of approach—the road along the ridge and the road along the valley; the Hun keeps the ridge-road continually under harassing fire. If a team was ditched or struck, it meant that every battery for a mile back was held up. The worst cause of delay was the single bridge across the river. Most of our confusion arose from the fact that the roads were used by both French and British troops, and were controlled by military-police of both nations. If a British Tommy wished to disobey a French traffic-control, he had ample excuse in pretending not to understand his language. The result was that the two streams, coming and going, often got wedged and double-banked. Everyone was working under a nervous tension. His own job was all important to him. It had to be accomplished between dusk and sunrise. If he failed, no matter what the delays, no excuse would be taken by superior officers. The consequence was a wild hustle and scramble, all of which took place under the cover of darkness There were only two nights in which everything had to be done. Our orders were that on the night previous to the attack, which is to-night, the roads were to be left free from wheel-traffic for the infantry and the tanks. The tanks are being brought in at the last moment to go over the top ahead of the attacking troops and to trample down the enemy’s defensive wire. The cutting of the wire is usually done by special artillery-shoots, which of course announce to the enemy’ something boisterous in the near future. But on this occasion we are doing no announcing, so the tanks have to perform the task which formerly fell to the artillery. Their job is to plunge their noses into our barrage and stamp a path through all obstacles that would impede our infantry. If one survives this war, will it seem more real in retrospect than it does now? Now it seems a wild distorted dream from which we shall awake presently. The memory of these last two nights seem the ramblings of a disordered mind. The very air was acrid with the sweat of men and horses driven beyond their strength. You heard and smelt them floundering in the darkness, but you rarely saw or felt them. They went by you breathing hard and indistinct as shadows. You heard men swearing in English and in French—swearing as passionlessly and mechanically as one who repeats a remembered prayer, and through all the agony without intentional blasphemy recurred the name of Christ. Above our heads we could hear the purring of hostile planes. Every now and then a bomb dropped and the earth rose up to meet it flaming red. For a moment the country for miles round was ensanguined and we saw one another distinctly, frightened horses rearing, riders in steel helmets crouching low in their saddles and men hanging on to the bridles to hold the horses down. Then the flame failed, like a torch stamped out, and we heard nothing but sobbing breath. While on the road the fear was always with us that at any minute our doings might be discovered and the enemy might open fire. If he had, few would have escaped. Quite remarkably he still seems totally ignorant of what is planned. One would have supposed that the roar of so much travel, always springing up at night and dying down with the dawn, would have warned him. We can hear it ourselves, even though we are part of it. It sounds like the muffled beat of many drums, accompanied by the shuffling of an immense crowd. It commences very distantly from miles back as the dusk begins to settle, and swells and swells in volume throughout the night, receding and finally dying into silence as the dawn spreads anal the sun begins to rise. If the enemy knows or suspects, he is waiting to catch us the night before the attack—tonight—when with so many men crowded into one area he can deluge us with death. That may be his game, but according to our information he is still puzzled as to our whereabouts. Our job to-night will be the heaviest we have tackled. We set out on foot as soon as the day begins to fail, taking with us the gun-crews, the signallers and a fatigue-party with sand-bags, picks and shovels. The work before us consists of digging gun-platforms and throwing up some kind of protection for the gunners, of man-handling the guns into position and getting them on for line, and of sorting out the shells and carrying them to immediately in the rear of the gun-platforms. We have not yet been told the exact hour at which the show opens, but we know that all our preparations for opening fire must be completed by 4 a. m. The consideration which we have to show for our men fills me with shame. We have to work them as if they were in bondage. If we have to treat them remorselessly, we get no better treatment ourselves. In the army every man in authority is a slave-driver and himself, in turn, a slave. The more one does, the more he may do; in the ranks, where the greatest sacrifices are made, there are few rewards and precious little thanks. One smiles out here when he reads of strikes at home for shorter hours and higher rates of pay. Our pay is a mere pittance, which dees not pretend to be approximately equivalent to the service rendered. Our hours are as long as the authorities who control our destinies like. For the last five nights our men have marched and worked incessantly; during the day they have been able to get no proper rest, what with the constant interruptions caused by stable-parades, guard-mountings, fatigues and pickets. To-night will be the sixth night that they have gone without sleep; at dawn they have to face up to the strain of battle, showing coolness, courage and steadiness of nerve. The standard we demand of ordinary men is too heroic, especially when we treat their sufferings as of no consequence. And yet these perfectly ordinary men, bully-ragged by discipline, disrespected in their persons, handicapped by hardship and abused in their strength, rise unfailingly to heights of nobility whenever the occasion presents itself. What is more, they do it utterly unconsciously, with the careless untheatric grandeur of original men. The army and its steam-roller methods have done much to degrade their external appearance, but they have not been able to destroy the secret glory which made them willing to submit to the rigors and indignities of the scarlet test. They are out here to prove their manhood. They came here to die that the world might be better. The army chooses to regard such courage as natural—so natural that it is almost to be despised; but it cannot make them lose their elation and quiet gladness in their sacrifice. Suzette———! My thoughts are forever turning to her—she impersonates the fineness for which we die. She moves among us with her patient serving hands and her quiet self-forgetting kindness. After all, our test—the test which we are called upon to face to-morrow—is the test which women have been facing without complaining throughout the ages, giving up their bodies to be smashed, that by the birth of a new life the world may start afresh The battle-fields on which her sisters have fallen lie far and wide, wherever men have trodden and still tread. For her and her sisters the test of scarlet is never ended. Perhaps it is because of this that she follows us and understands. It’s time for evening-stables; the men are waking up and crawling out from the underbrush with blinking eyes. The chaps who are to go forward with us to fight the guns are already at the cookhouse, getting their supper. They’re laughing and joking as if they hadn’t a care. In about an hour we ought to make a start. The tanks have already commenced to move up; from miles back one can hear the rumble of their progress. Where shall we be tomorrow? What new march shall we have undertaken? Shall we have broken the line and have sailed off into the blue, pursuing the Hun? Or shall we have finished our last march and be lying very quietly? So long as we break the enemy’s line, what happens to anyone of us does not matter. To lie very quietly would be pleasant; we shall have earned a long, unbroken rest.
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