Quite frankly, Lieutenant Davison didn't like his position. In the first place, it was tactless of the Command to label it brutally ``a sacrifice post.'' However willing you might be to do your bit and to take your chance with the rest, flesh and blood revolted from so chill and formal a holocaust. A sacrifice post! They plonked you out there in the mud, you and a couple of N. C. O.'s and some men - and your job was to get killed if the enemy attacked. You weren't allowed to retreat; you knew that nobody would be allowed to succour or reinforce you; the idea was that you held, out as long as possible with a couple of Lewis guns, and then fired a coloured light to give warning to the artillery when capture and death were inevitable. A very pleasant prospect. A most jolly look-out.
Davison was leaning against the parapet of his strong-point, studying the lie of the land in front of him. It was just after dawn on his first day in command of the Post. There were lots of ragged wire in front, then a long shell-torn slope, then...
Zip-phut!
A sniper's bullet hit the sandbag parapet just about two inches under his chin. Davison ducked into the trench, feeling a bit sweaty in the back. If that Boche hadn't been quite so keen on a six o'clock aim...!
He went along the trench towards his pill-box dug-out. The liquid chalky mud washed round his ankles. Rather a delusion, gum-boots -- you got all the cold through them, and the condensed perspiration made your socks wringing wet in a few hours...
Crash. Crash-crash. Crash.
That same old battery of Boche whizz-bangs. They'd been at it ever since midnight when Davison took over. Damn the fellows. Didn't they ever take any rest? No wonder the other officer had been in such a hurry to hand over!
``There's a map of the dispositions and written instructions - you can't make any mistake.'' He had gabbled rapidly. ``Here's the list of trench stores. You don't need to check 'em, they're all right - S. A. A., Mills, rifle-grenades, Verey pistols and cartridges, S. 0. S., they're all there. Well, I'll be getting off.''
``But,'' Davison had interrupted angrily, ``you can't buzz off like that! I want to see the sentry-posts and Lewis-gun positions, and...''
``Oh, the sergeant knows all about those...''
Four whizz-bangs had crashed about their heads, and the other man had cowered in a manner Davison thought disgraceful in an officer. He was about to remonstrate more angrily, but the other man simply made a bolt for it, shouting over his shoulder:
``He shells and minnies all day and all night. Got this blasted post taped. Hope you enjoy yourself. Cheero!''
Davison had started after him, but the man had vanished in the darkness, hareing down the communication trench with his runner as if he had received a sudden call to paradise. Davison cursed him, and had spent most of the night going cautiously round his positions, learning the sentry-posts and Lewis-gun emplacements, then returning to his dug-out to study his orders, make reports and answer queries sent up over the buzzer. The Boche had crumped unmercifully all night. Minnies, pineapples, and whizz-bangs. Luckily, there had only been one casualty - a sentry slightly wounded in the shoulder, and damned glad to get away for a few weeks. But the continued crumping had got the men rattled. Besides, they resented - quite rightly - the fact that the officer in command was relieved more frequently than they were. They couldn't know that the responsibility of such a post meant that the subaltern got hardly any sleep at аll.
About three-thirty, Davison had crawled into his wire bedstead to get an hour's sleep before stand-to. Within ten minutes he had been awakened by his servant.
``Wha's matter? Are they coming over? Anybody hit?''
``No, sir. Runner from Batt. H. Q., sir.''
Davison had torn open the message with feverish haste. It was marked urgent, and required him instantly to furnish statistics of the number of socks in his detachment...