If so, we shall have
some close work with bombs--a most ungentlemanly method of warfare.
Let us pray for a straightforward frontal attack."
But Brer Bosche had other cards to play first. Suddenly, out of
nowhere, the air was filled with "whizz-bang" shells, moving in a
lightning procession which lasted nearly half an hour. Most of these
plastered the already scarred countenance of Fosse Eight: others
fell shorter and demolished our parapet. When the tempest ceased, as
suddenly as it began, the number of casualties in the crowded trench
was considerable. But there was little time to attend to the wounded.
Already the word was running down, the line--
"Look out to your front!"
Sure enough, over the skyline, two hundred yards away, grey figures
were appearing--not in battalions, but tentatively, in twos and
threes. Next moment a storm of rapid rifle fire broke from the trench.
The grey figures turned and ran. Some disappeared over the horizon,
others dropped flat, others simply curled up and withered. In three
minutes solitude reigned again, and the firing ceased.
"Well, that's that!" observed Captain Wagstaffe to Bobby Little, upon
the right of the Battalion line. "The Bosche has 'bethought himself
and went,' as the poet says. Now he knows we are here, and have
brought our arquebuses with us. He will try something more ikey next
time.
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