The staff-officer tapped on the table with a lead-pencil a tattoo, while his forehead puckered. Then he spoke into the telephone again.

“Are you there, ‘Heavies’?⁠ ⁠… Well, don’t disturb those fellows for half an hour. After that I will give you new orders. Try and confirm if they are our men.”

He rang off and turned to me.

“That’s the trouble. Looks as if we had been pounding our own men like hell. Some damn fool reports ‘Boches.’ Gives the reference number. Asks for the ‘Heavies.’ Then some other fellow says: ‘Not Boches. For God’s sake cease fire!’ How is one to tell?”

I could not answer that question, but I hated the idea of our men sent forward to capture a road or a trench or a wood and then “pounded” by our guns. They had enough pounding from the enemy’s guns. There seemed a missing link in the system somewhere. Probably it was quite inevitable.