"It must be great sport."
"They tell me it's a greatly overrated amusement," replied
Wagstaffe--"like posting an insulting letter to some one you dislike.
You see, you aren't there when he opens it at breakfast next morning!
The only man of them who gets any fun is the Forward Observing
Officer. And he," concluded Wagstaffe in an unusual vein of pessimism,
"does not live long enough to enjoy it!"
The grievances of the Infantry, however, are not limited to those
supplied by the Royal Artillery. There are the machine-guns and the
trench-mortars.
The machine-gunner is a more or less accepted nuisance by this time.
He has his own emplacements in the line, but he never appears to use
them. Instead, he adopts the peculiar expedient of removing his weapon
from a snug and well-fortified position, and either taking it away
somewhere behind the trenches and firing salvoes over your head (which
is reprehensible), or planting it upon the parapet in your particular
preserve, and firing it from there (which is criminal). Machine-gun
fire always provokes retaliation.
"Why in thunder can't you keep your filthy tea-kettle in its own
place, instead of bringing it here to draw fire?" inquired Mr.
Cockerell, not altogether unreasonably, as Ayling and his satellites
passed along the trench bearing the offending weapon, with
water-jacket aboil, back to its official residence.
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