From the point of view of the defence it is an important and unpleasant fact that an air barrage eventually returns to the ground. Guns and the R.O. had been pumping out bullets at a rate of some hundreds per minute each, and all those bullets after missing their target had to arrive somewhere on the earth. The gunners’ interest in them passed for the moment as soon as the bullets had failed to hit their mark, and afterwards they came to remember with amazement that ever they could have been so idiotically unconsidering.
Some distance from the ’drome, and in a line beyond the tip of the wood, there stood a number of Nissen huts which housed a Divisional Staff, and the inevitable consequence was that those up-and-down twitching gun-muzzles sprayed showers of lead in gusts across and across the hutments. The General Commanding the Division was in the middle of his dinner with about five staff officers round the table when the first “aeroplane over” warning went on this particular night of the new air barrage. The lights in the Mess hut were not extinguished, because full precautions had been taken some nights before to have the small window-space fully and closely screened against the possibility of leakage of a single ray of light. One or two remarks were made quite casually about the nasty raiding habits of the Huns, but since no bombs had come near in the earlier raids, and the conclusion was therefore reasonable that the Divisional H.Q. had not been located, nobody there worried much over the matter, and dinner proceeded.
They all heard the drone of the Hun engine, and, because it was a very still night, they heard it rather louder than usual. Someone had just remarked that they seemed to be coming closer to-night, when the further remarks were violently interrupted by a clashing and clattering _B-bang_ ... _br-r-rip-rap_, _ba-bang-bang_, the splintering, ripping sound of smashed wood, the crash, clash tinkle of a bottle burst into a thousand fragments on the table under their startled eyes. The barrage bullets had returned to earth.
The group at the table had time for no more than a pause of astonishment, a few exclamations, a hasty pushing back of chairs, when _rip-rap-bang-bang-bang_ down came the second spray of bullets from those jerking muzzles over on the ’drome. Now a bullet hitting any solid object makes a nasty and most disconcerting sort of noise; but when it hits the tin roof of a Nissen hut, tears through it and the wood lining inside, passes out again or comes to rest in the hut, the noises become involved and resemble all sorts of queer sounds from kicking a tea-tray to treading on an empty match-box. The huts were solidly sand-bagged up their outside walls to a height of some feet, but had no overhead cover whatever. The third burst from Guns and the R.O. arrived on the hut at exactly the same moment as the General and his Staff arrived on the floor as close as they could get to the wall and the protecting sandbags. They stayed there for some exciting minutes while Guns shot numerous holes in the roof, splintered the furniture, and shot the dinner piecemeal off the table.