78 Pages - The Black Vault

“We lay bare as the paunchof the purser’s sow,To the hail of the Nordenfe/dt. ”This was the last straw; there was nothing left butsurrender or entire annihilation at long range. I surrendered.Beers, as usual, sprang up from all round, We hadfought for three hours, and had 25 killed and 17wounded. Of these, seven only had been hit by theshrapnel and rifle-fire from the front. All the rest hadbeen killed or hit from the flanks, where there shouldbe few enemies, or the rear, where there should benone! This fact convinced me that my preconceivednotions as to the front, and its danger relative to theother points of the compass, needed considerablemodification. All my cherished ideas were beingruthlessly swept away, and I was plunged into a seaof doubt, groping for something certain or fixed tolay hold of. Could Longfellow, when he wrote thatimmortal line, “Things are not what they seem, ” everhave been in my position?The survivors were naturally a little disheartenedat their total discomfiture, when all had started sowell with them in their “crack.” This expressed itselfin different ways. As one man said to a co[poral, whowas plugging a hole in his ear with a bit of rag—“Something sickening, I call it, this enfilading racket;you never know which way it will take yer. I’mfairly fed UP. ”TO which the gloomy reply, “Enfiladed?Of course we’ve been enfiladed .This’ere trenchsheuld have been wiggled about a bit, and then therewould not have been quite so much of it. Yes, wiggled44