dark as we struggled through the mud, and we got there with fifteen minutes to spare, having taken three and a half hours to go a mile and a quarter.
Barton arranged his men along a shallow support trench on the edge of Bottom Wood, which was a copse just to the left of the ground we’d visited the night before. Almost at once the short preliminary bombardment began and the darkness became diabolic with the din and flash of the old old story. Not for the first time—I wondered whether shells ever collided in the air. Silence and suspense came after. Barton and I talked in undertones; he thought I’d better borrow his electric torch and find out the nearest way to Battalion Headquarters.
Everyone was anonymous in the dark, but “It’s me, Kendle, Sir,” from a looming figure beside me implied an intention to share my explorations. We groped our way into the wood, and very soon I muttered that unless we were careful we’d get lost, which was true enough, for my sense of direction had already become uncertain. While we hesitated, some shells exploded all round us in the undergrowth with an effect of crashing stupidity. But we laughed, encouraging each other with mutual bravado, until we found a path. Along this path came someone in a hurry. He bumped into me and I flashed the torch on his face. He was an officer who had joined us the week before. He had now lost all control of himself and I gathered from his incoherent utterances that he was on his way to Headquarters to tell Kinjack that his Company hadn’t moved yet because they didn’t know which way to go to find the Germans. This wasn’t surprising; but I felt alarmed about his reception at Headquarters, for Kinjack had already got an idea that this poor devil was “cold-footed.” So, with an assumption of ferocity, I pulled out my automatic pistol, gripped him by the shoulder, and told him that if he didn’t go straight back to “Asbestos Bill” I’d shoot him, adding that Kinjack would certainly shoot him if he rolled up at Headquarters with such a story and in such a state of “windup.” This sobered him and he took my advice,