.. what's the
use...."
The sergeant interrupted sharply.
"Here, you shut up, Bunthrop," he shouted. "Keep down in the trench.
You're wounded, aren't you? Well, you'll get back presently."
"That be damn," said Bunthrop. "You don't understand. They're runnin'
away, but we can't go out after 'em if these silly blighters here keep
shootin'. Come on now, or they'll all be gone." And Private Bunthrop,
the despised "conscript," slung his bayoneted rifle over his wounded
shoulder and commenced to scramble up out over the front of the broken
parapet. And what is more he was really and genuinely annoyed when the
sergeant catching him by the heel dragged him down again and ordered
him to stay there.
"Don't you understand?" he stuttered excitedly, and gesticulating
fiercely towards the front. "They're runnin', I tell you; the blighters
are runnin' away. Why can't we get out after 'em?"
SMASHING THE COUNTER-ATTACK
" ... _a violent counter-attack was delivered but was successfully
repulsed at every point with heavy losses to the enemy_."--EXTRACT FROM
OFFICIAL DESPATCH.
There appears to be some doubt as to who rightly claims to have been
the first to notice and report signs of the massing of heavy forces of
Germans for the counter-attack on our positions. The infantry say that
a scouting patrol fumbling about in the darkness in front of the
forward fire trench heard suspicious sounds--little clickings of
equipment and accouterments, stealthy rustlings, distant tramping--and
reported on their return to the trench.
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