The hillock was still under heavy shell-fire. They had been warned in practice attack that there would probably be shell-fire, and here it was, shrieking, crashing, tearing the wrecked ground to fresh shapes of wreckage, spouting in fountains of black smoke and earth, whistling and hurtling in jagged fragments, hitting solidly and bursting in whirlwinds of flame and smoke. Ratty had no time to think of the shells. He strained his eyes over the sights on the foot of the dimly seen trees, held his gun steady and spitting its jets of flame and lead, until word came to him, somehow or from somewhere to cease firing. The attack had been wiped out, he heard said. He straightened his bent shoulders and discovered with immense surprise that one shoulder hurt, that his jacket was soaked with blood. “Nothing more than a good Blighty one,” said the bearer who tied him up. “Keep you home two-three months mebbe.” “Good enough,” said Ratty. “I’ll be back in time to see the finish,” and lit a cigarette contentedly. Back in the Aid Post later he heard from one of the Jocks who had been down there in the smoke somewhere between the machine-guns and the wood, that the front line was already well consolidated. He heard too that the German counter-attack had been cut to pieces, and that the open ground before our new line front was piled with their dead. “You fellies was just late enough wi’ your machine-guns,” said the Highlander. “In anither three-fower meenits they’d a been right on top o’ us.” “Late be blowed,” said Ratty. “We was on the right spot exackly at the programme time o’ the plan. We’d rehearsed the dash thing an’ clocked it too often for me not to be sure o’ that. We was there just when we was meant to be, an’ that was just when they knew we’d be wanted. Whole plunky attack went like clockwork, far’s our bit o’ the plans went.” But it was two days later and snug in bed in a London hospital, when he had read the dispatches describing the battle, that he had his last word on “planned attacks.” “Lumme,” he said to the next bed, “I likes this dispatch of ole ’Indenburg’s. Good mile an’ a half we pushed ’em back, an’ held all the ground, an’ took 6,000 prisoners; an’, says ’Indenburg, ‘the British attack was completely repulsed ... only a few crater positions were abandoned by us according to plan.’” He dropped the paper and grinned. “Accordin’ to plan,” he said. “That’s true enough. But ’e forgot to say it was the same as it always is—accordin’ to the plan that was made by ‘Aig an’ us.” XVII DOWN IN HUNLAND