The result was that
three battalion commanders assembled at the O in "ghostly," while the
fourth, ignoring the adjective in favour of the noun, took up his
station at the first O in "bottom."
The operations had been somewhat optimistically timed to end at 11
P.M., but by the time that the four battalions had effected a most
unloverly tryst, it was close on ten, and beginning to rain. The
consequence was that the men got home to bed, soaked to the skin, and
asking the Powers Above rhetorical questions, at three o'clock in the
morning.
Next day Brigade Orders announced that the movement would be continued
at nightfall, by the occupation of the hastily-dug trenches, followed
by a night attack upon the hill in front. The captured position would
then be retrenched.
When the tidings went round, fourteen of the more quick-witted spirits
of "A" Company hurriedly paraded before the Medical Officer and
announced that they were "sick in the stomach." Seven more discovered
abrasions upon their feet, and proffered their sores for inspection,
after the manner of Oriental mendicants. One skrimshanker, despairing
of producing any bodily ailment, rather ingeniously assaulted a
comrade-in-arms, and was led away, deeply grateful, to the guard-room.
Wee Peter, who in the course of last night's operations had stumbled
into an old trench half-filled with ice-cold water, and whose
temperature to-day, had he known it, was a hundred and two, paraded
with his company at the appointed time.
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