Rabbie openly scoffed at the nickname of “Suicide Club” for the Bombing Section. They had lost a couple of men wounded in the first attack, and had spent a merry morning frightening Boche prisoners out of their dug-outs, or in obstinate cases flinging Mills’ grenades down the stairways.
They had waited to help stand off the counter-attack the first night, but never needed to raise their heads or fling a bomb over the edge of the broken parapet, because the counter-attack was wiped out by artillery and rifle fire long before it came within bombing distance.
“You an’ yer Suicide Club!” said Rabbie contemptuously to Shirty after this attack had been beaten off. “It’s no even what the insurance folks would ca’ a hazardous occupation.”
“Wait a bit,” said Shirty. “We all knows you’re a bloomin’ Scots-wha-hae hero, but you ’aven’t bin in it proper yet. Wait till you ’ave, an’ then talk.”
The Bombing Section went into it “proper” next day, when the battalion made a little forward move that cost them more casualties to take a trench and a hundred yards of ground than the mile advance of the previous day.
And when they had got the battered trench, the bombers were sent to clear a communication trench leading out of it and held by the Germans. This trench was more or less broken down, with fallen sides or tumbled heaps of earth and gaping shell craters every here and there along its length. The Germans contested it stoutly, and the bombers had to keep below the level of the ground and strictly to the trench, because above-ground was being swept by a hurricane of rifle and machine-gun fire from both sides. Length by length of the zig-zag trench they pushed their way, their grenades curving up and ahead of them, the German “potato-masher” grenades whirling over and down in on them, exploding with a prodigious noise and smoke but comparatively little damage, and yet cutting down the attackers one by one
Rabbie, Lauchie, and Shirty were all in the trench together, and were still on their feet when they came to the point where the communication trench ran into another, a support trench presumably, running across it. At this point they were supposed to hold on and consolidate. All had gone well according to programme with Rabbie and his companions, and they turned into the support trench, cleared a couple of bays to either side of the communication way, pulled down sandbags, and piled earth to make a “block” on either side, and settled down to hold their position and to await orders.