"
"Killed, sir," I enquired.
"Killed on the spot," was the answer.
On our way back we encountered our captain superintending some digging
operation.
"Have you got the water already?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"How is that?"
"An officer of the ---- wouldn't let us go by without a written
permission."
"Why?"
"He said it was a Brigade order," was Pryor's naive reply. He wanted
to go up that perilous road. The captain sat down on a sandbag, took
out a slip of paper (or borrowed one from Pryor), placed his hat on
his knee and the paper on his hat, and wrote us out the pass. (p. 105)
For twenty yards from the trench the road was sheltered by our
parapet, past that lay the beaten zone, the ground under the enemy's
rifle fire. He occupied a knoll on the left, the spot where the
fighting was heavy on the night before, and from there he had a good
view of the road. We hurried along, the jars striking against our legs
at every step. The water was obtained from a pump at the back of a
ruined villa in a desolate village. The shrapnel shivered house was
named Dead Cow Cottage. The dead cow still lay in the open garden, its
belly swollen and its left legs sticking up in the air like props in
an upturned barrel. It smelt abominably, but nobody dared go out into
the open to bury it.
The pump was known as Cock Robin Pump. A pencilled notice told that a
robin was killed by a Jack Johnson near the spot on a certain date.
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