The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War. Patrick MacGill

      Then he relapsed into silence. None of us spoke, but we were aware that Felan knew how much his song had moved us.

      "Have another drink," said Pryor suddenly, in a thick voice. "'Look not upon the wine when it is red,'" he quoted. "But there'll be something redder than wine to-morrow!"

      "I wish we fought wiv bladders on sticks; it would be more to my taste," said Bill Teake.

      "Ye're not having a drop at all, corporal," said M'Crone. "Have a sup; it's grand stuff."

      The corporal shook his head. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his hands under his thighs. He had a blunt nose with wide nostrils, and his grey, contemplative eyes kept roving slowly round the circle as if he were puzzling over our fate in the charge to-morrow.

      "I don't drink," he said. "If I can't do without it now after keeping off it so long, I'm not much good."

      "Yer don't know wot's good for yer," said Bill, gazing regretfully at the last half-bottle. "There's nuffink like fizz. My ole man's a devil fer 'is suds; so'm I."

      The conversation became riotous, questions and replies got mixed and jumbled. "I suppose we'll get to the front trench anyhow; maybe to the second. But we'll get flung back from that." "Wish we'd another bloomin' bottle of fizz." "S'pose our guns will not lift their range quick enough when we advance. We'll have any amount of casualties with our own shells." "The sergeant says that our objective is the crucifix in Loos churchyard." "Imagine killing men right up to the foot of the Cross." …

      Our red-headed platoon sergeant appeared at the top of the stairs, his hair lurid in the candle light.

      "Enjoying yourselves, boys?" he asked, with paternal solicitude. The sergeant's heart was in his platoon.

      "'Avin' a bit of a frisky," said Bill. "Will yer 'ave a drop?"

      "I don't mind," said the sergeant. He spoke almost in a whisper, and something seemed to be gripping at his throat.

      He put the bottle to his lips and paused for a moment.

      "Good luck to us all!" he said, and drank.

      "We're due to leave in fifteen minutes," he told us. "Be ready when you hear the whistle blown in the street. Have a smoke now, for no pipes or cigarettes are to be lit on the march."

      He paused for a moment, then, wiping his moustache with the back of his hand, he clattered downstairs.

      The night was calm and full of enchantment. The sky hung low and was covered with a greyish haze. We marched past Les Brebis Church up a long street where most of the houses were levelled to the ground. Ahead the star-shells rioted in a blaze of colour, and a few rifles were snapping viciously out by Hohenzollern Redoubt, and a building on fire flared lurid against the eastern sky. Apart from that silence and suspense, the world waited breathlessly for some great event. The big guns lurked on their emplacements, and now and again we passed a dark-blue muzzle peeping out from its cover, sentinel, as it seemed, over the neatly piled stack of shells which would furnish it with its feed at dawn.

      At the fringe of Bully-Grenay we left the road and followed a straggling path across the level fields where telephone wires had fallen down and lay in wait to trip unwary feet. Always the whispers were coming down the line: "Mind the wires!" "Mind the shell-holes!" "Gunpit on the left. Keep clear." "Mind the dead mule on the right," etc.

      Again we got to the road where it runs into the village of Maroc. A church stood at the entrance and it was in a wonderful state of preservation. Just as we halted for a moment on the roadway the enemy sent a solitary shell across which struck the steeple squarely, turning it round, but failing to overthrow it.

      "A damned good shot," said Pryor approvingly.