Page:Breaking the Hindenburg Line.djvu/112

92, telephone lines must be laid from Brigade Headquarters to batteries, barrage tables must be prepared, and ammunition brought up and dumped handy to the guns.

The group commander, taking his battery commanders with him, proceeds direct to the area allotted to him, and arrives with half an hour of daylight remaining in which to choose his headquarters and the battery positions.

Battery positions must of course be chosen so that they are not under direct observation of the enemy. Precautions must also be taken to ensure that the guns can clear the crest in front of them and have a clear line of fire to engage the targets assigned to them.

The exact positions of the enemy are not known with any certainty. A moment's thought will suffice to show that the difficulties of choosing in such short time suitable positions for four batteries, in unknown country, with the situation obscure and the light failing, are all but insuperable. When, in spite of circumstances, battery positions have been selected and a Brigade Headquarters chosen, officers are sent back to bring the guns into position.

The officers sent back have had little chance of studying the country, and it is by now a pitch-black night. The roads are crowded with traffic, tracks are deep in mud and broken-up every few yards by deep shell-craters. Every yard of the way there is imminent danger of gun or wagon falling headlong into a hole from which it would take hours to retrieve them. When the positions are finally reached, the guns must be manœuvred over shell-torn ground into the precise sites selected for them.

Meanwhile, the Brigade Staff, sitting in a hole in a