In the signalers’ room all the fluctuations of the fight were translated from the pulsing fever, the human living tragedies and heroisms, the violent hopes and fears and anxieties of the battle line, to curt cold words, to scribbled letters on a message form.  At times these messages were almost meaningless to them, or at least their red tragedy was unheeded.  Their first thought when a message was handed in for transmission, usually their first question when the signaler at the other end called to take a message, was whether the message was a long one or a short one.  One telephonist was handed an urgent message to send off, saying that bombs were running short in the forward line and that further supplies were required at the earliest possible moment, that the line was being severely bombed and unless they had the means to reply must be driven out or destroyed.  The signaler took that message and sent it through; but his instrument was not working very clearly, and he was a good deal more concerned and his mind was much more fully taken up with the exasperating difficulty of making the signaler at the other end catch word or letter correctly, than it was with all the close packed volume of meaning it contained.  It was not that he did not understand the meaning; he himself had known a line bombed out before now, the trenches rent and torn apart, the shattered limbs and broken bodies of the defenders, the horrible ripping crash of the bombs, the blinding flame, the numbing shock, the smoke and reek and noise of the explosions; but though all these things were known to him, the words “bombed out” meant no more now than nine letters of the alphabet and the maddening stupidity of the man at the other end, who would misunderstand the sound and meaning of “bombed” and had to have it in time-consuming letter-by-letter spelling.

When he had sent that message, he took off and wrote down one or two others from the signaling station he was in touch with.  His own station, it will be remembered, was close up to the forward firing line, a new firing line which marked the limits of the advance made that morning.  The station he was connected with was back in rear of what, previous to the attack, had been the British forward line.  Between the two the thin insignificant thread of the telephone wire ran twisting across the jumble of the trenches of our old firing line, the neutral ground that had lain between the trenches, and the other maze of trench, dug-out, and bomb-proof shelter pits that had been captured from the enemy.  Then in the middle of sending a message, the wire went dead, gave no answer to repeated calls on the “buzzer.”  The sergeant, called to consultation, helped to overlook and examine the instrument.  Nothing could be found wrong with it, but to make quite sure the fault was not there, a spare instrument was coupled on to a short length of wire between it and the old one.  They carried the message perfectly, so with curses of angry disgust the wire was pronounced disconnected, or “disc,” as the signaler called it.