"What's that? Wasps?"
A number of insects were flying overhead with a queer, sibilant noise.
Somewhere in the darkness there was a steady rattle in the throat of a
beast.
"What's that, Sergeant?"
"Machine-gums, my child. Keep your head down, or you'll lose hold of
it. . . Steady, there. Don't get jumpy, now!"
The machine-gun was firing too high to do any serious damage. It was
probably a ricochet from a broken tree which made one of the boys
suddenly drop his spade and fall over it in a crumpled way.
"Get up, Charlie," said the comrade next to him; and then, in a scared
voice, "Oh, Sergeant!"
"That's all right," said the sergeant-major. "We're getting off very
lightly. New remember what I've been telling you. . . Stretcher this
way."
They were very steady through the night, this first company of the New
Army.
"Like old soldiers, sir," said the sergeant-major, when he stood
chatting with the colonel after breakfast.
It was a bit of bad luck, though not very bad, after all--which made
the Germans shell a hamlet into which I went just as some of the New
Army were marching through to their quarters.
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