The
orderlies coming in with messages were daubed thick with the wet mud
from boot-soles to shoulders, often with their puttees and knees and
thighs dripping and running water as if they had just waded through a
stream. Those who by the carrying of a message had just completed a
turn of duty, reported themselves, handed over a message perhaps,
slouched wearily over to the wall farthest from the door, dropped on
the stone floor, bundled up a pack or a haversack, or anything else
convenient for a pillow, lay down and spread a wet mackintosh over
them, wriggled and composed their bodies into the most comfortable, or
rather the least uncomfortable possible position, and in a few minutes
were dead asleep.
It was nothing to them that every now and again the house above them
shook and quivered to the shock of a heavy shell exploding somewhere on
the ground round the house, that the rattle of rifle fire dwindled away
at times to separate and scattered shots, brisked up again and rose to
a long roll, the devil's tattoo of the machine guns rattling through it
with exactly the sound a boy makes running a stick rapidly along a
railing. The bursting shells and scourging rifle fire, sweeping machine
guns, banging grenades and bombs were all affairs with which the
Signaling Company in the cellar had no connection.
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