...
After a day or so of digging and scheming, Barnet found himself in the
forefront of a battle. He had made his section of rifle pits chiefly
along a line of deep dry ditch that gave a means of inter-communication,
he had had the earth scattered over the adjacent field, and he had
masked his preparations with tussocks of corn and poppy. The hostile
advance came blindly and unsuspiciously across the fields below and
would have been very cruelly handled indeed, if some one away to the
right had not opened fire too soon.
'It was a queer thrill when these fellows came into sight,' he
confesses; 'and not a bit like manoeuvres. They halted for a time on
the edge of the wood and then came forward in an open line. They kept
walking nearer to us and not looking at us, but away to the right of us.
Even when they began to be hit, and their officers' whistles woke them
up, they didn't seem to see us. One or two halted to fire, and then they
all went back towards the wood again. They went slowly at first, looking
round at us, then the shelter of the wood seemed to draw them, and they
trotted. I fired rather mechanically and missed, then I fired again, and
then I became earnest to hit something, made sure of my sighting, and
aimed very carefully at a blue back that was dodging about in the corn.
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