CHAPTER XI.

ST JANS CAPPEL.

Soon after our return there were rumours of a grand attack.  Headquarters positively sizzled with the most expensive preparations.  At a given word the Staff were to dash out in motor-cars to a disreputable tavern, so that they could see the shells bursting.  A couple of despatch riders were to keep with them in order to fetch their cars when the day’s work was over.  A mobile reserve of motor-cyclists was to be established in a farm under cover.

The whole scheme was perfect.  There was good rabbit-shooting near the tavern.  The atmosphere inside was so thick that it actually induced slumber.  The landlady possessed an excellent stove, upon which the Staff’s lunch, prepared with quiet genius at St Jans, might be heated up.  The place was dirty enough to give all those in authority, who might come round to see that the British Army was really doing something, a vivid conception of the horrors of war.  And, as I have said, there was a slope behind the road from which lots and lots of shells could be seen bursting.

The word came.  We arrived at the tavern before dawn.  The Staff sauntered about outside in delicious anticipation.  We all looked at our watches.  Punctually at six the show began.  Guns of all shapes and sizes had been concentrated.  They made an overwhelming noise.  Over the German trenches on the near slope of the Messines ridge flashed multitudinous points of flame.  The Germans were being furiously shelled.  The dawn came up while the Staff were drinking their matutinal tea.  The Staff set itself sternly to work.  Messages describing events at La Bassee poured in.  They were conscientiously read and rushed over the wires to our brigades.  The guns were making more noise than they had ever made before.  The Germans were cowering in their trenches.  It was all our officers could do to hold back their men, who were straining like hounds in a leash to get at the hated foe.  A shell fell among some of the gunners’ transport and wounded a man and two horses.  That stiffened us.  The news was flashed over the wire to G.H.Q.  The transport was moved rapidly, but in good order, to a safer place.  The guns fired more furiously than ever.

As soon as there was sufficient light, the General’s A.D.C., crammed full of the lust for blood, went out and shot some rabbits and some indescribable birds, who by this time were petrified with fear.  They had never heard such a noise before.  That other despatch rider sat comfortably in a car, finished at his leisure the second volume of ‘Sinister Street,’ and wrote a lurid description of a modern battle.

Before the visitors came, the scene was improved by the construction of a large dug-out near the tavern.  It is true that if the Staff had taken to the dug-out they would most certainly have been drowned.  That did not matter.  Every well-behaved Divisional Staff must have a dug-out near its Advanced Headquarters.  It is always “done.”