Beyond a tangled heap of broken machinery, that included a huge fly-wheel, bent and cracked, stood a big water-tank, raised aloft on massive iron standards. "We might be able to see something from up there," said the major. There was a certain amount of swarming to be done, and the major, giving up the contest, aided me to clamber up. Out of breath I stood up in the dusty waterless tank, and got out my binoculars. Towards where the crackle of machine-guns had been heard, I saw a bush-clad bank. Tucked up against it were horses and guns. Big Boche shells kept falling near, and the landscape was wreathed in smoke. Before we got to the battery we met Major Bullivant, whose gestures alone were eloquent enough to describe most war scenes. A rippling sweep of his left arm indicated where two machine-gun nests on the bosky western slopes of Saulcourt held up our infantry; a swan-like curl of the right wrist, raised to the level of the shoulder, told where A Battery had been situated, less than a thousand yards from the enemy. "A company of the ---- were faltering because of the deadliness of the machine-guns," he said. "... I got hold of a platoon commander and he took me far enough forward to detect their whereabouts.... We fired 200 rounds when I got back to the battery. My gunners popped them off in find style, although the Boche retaliated.... The infantry have gone on now.... I found two broken machine-guns and six dead Germans at the spots we fired at.... It's been quite a good morning's work." He smiled an adieu and went off to join a company commander he had arranged to meet. When we reached the bank A Battery were about to move to a sunken road farther forward. Smallman, from South Africa, nicknamed "Buller," was in charge, and he pointed joyously to an abandoned Boche Red Cross waggon that the battery had "commandeered." Four mules had been harnessed to it; the battery waggon line was its destination. "Gee-ho! they went off in a hurry from here," remarked Major Veasey, looking at a light engine and three trucks loaded with ammunition and corrugated iron that the enemy had failed to get away on the narrow-gauge line running past Saulcourt. "What we ought to do is to have a railway ride back. The line goes to Nurlu. That would be a new experience--and I'm tired enough." "Yes, that would be better than the four-in-hand in the G.S. waggon that you took to the sports meeting," I added.