BETWEEN THE LINES

BY

BOYD CABLE

TORONTO

McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD, & STEWART, LTD. 

1916

TO

THE EDITOR OF THE CORNHILL

REGINALD JOHN SMITH

_for whose helpful criticism and advice, kindly consideration andunfailing courtesy to an unknown writer, a sufficiency of gratefulappreciation can never be expressed by_

THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

This book, all of which has been written at the Front within sound ofthe German guns and for the most part within shell and rifle range, isan attempt to tell something of the manner of struggle that has gone onfor months between the lines along the Western Front, and moreespecially of what lies behind and goes to the making of those curt andvague terms in the war communiqués. I think that our people at Homewill be glad to know more, and ought to know more, of what these baldphrases may actually signify, when, in the other sense, we read'between the lines. '

Of the people at Home--whom we at the Front have relied upon and lookedto more than they may know--many have helped us in heaping measure ofdeed and thought and thoughtfulness, while others may perhaps havefailed somewhat in their full duty, because, as we have been told andre-told to the point of weariness, they 'have not understood' and 'donot realise' and 'were never told. '

If this book brings anything of interest and pleasure to the first, andof understanding to the second, it will very fully have served itsdouble purpose. 

BOYD CABLE. 

'SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE' _Sept. _ 15, 1915. 

CONTENTS

 THE ADVANCED TRENCHES SHELLS THE MINE ARTILLERY SUPPORT 'NOTHING TO REPORT' THE PROMISE OF SPRING THE ADVANCE A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION 'BUSINESS AS USUAL' A HYMN OF HATE THE COST A SMOKER'S COMPANION THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. THE SIGNALLER'S DAY

BETWEEN THE LINES

THE ADVANCED TRENCHES

'_Near Blank, on the Dash-Dot front, a section of advanced trenchchanged hands several times, finally remaining in our possession. _'

For perhaps the twentieth time in half an hour the look-out man in theadvanced trench raised his head cautiously over the parapet and peeredout into the darkness. A drizzling rain made it almost impossible tosee beyond a few yards ahead, but then the German trench was not morethan fifty yards off and the space between was criss-crossed andinterlaced and a-bristle with the tangle of barb-wire defences erectedby both sides. For the twentieth time the look-out peered and twistedhis head sideways to listen, and for the twentieth time he was justlowering his head beneath the sheltering parapet when he stopped andstiffened into rigidity. There was no sound apart from the sharpcracks of the rifles near at hand and running diminuendo along thetrenches into a rising and falling stutter of reports, the frequentwhine and whistle of the more distant bullets, and the quick hiss and'zipp' of the nearer ones, all sounds so constant and normal that thelook-out paid no heed to them, put them, as it were, out of the focusof his hearing, and strained to catch the fainter but far moresignificant sound of a footstep squelching in the mud, the 'snip' of awire-cutter at work, the low 'tang' of a jarred wire. 

A few hundred yards down the line, a dazzling light sprang out, hungsuspended, and slowly floated down, glowing nebulous in the misty rain, and throwing a soft radiance and dusky shadows and gleaming lines ofsilver along the parapets and wire entanglements. 

Intent, the look-out stared to his front for a moment, flung muzzleover the parapet and butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at oneof the darker blotches that lay prone beyond the outer tangles of wire. The blotch jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, slipped outthe catch of his magazine cut-off, and pumped out the rounds as fast asfingers could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing flashes of thedischarge lighting with sharp vivid glares his tense features, setteeth, and scowling eyes. There was a pause and stillness for thespace of a couple of quick-drawn breaths, and then--pandemonium!

The forward trench flamed and blazed with spouts of rifle-fire, itsslightly curved length clearly defined from end to end by the spittingflashes. Verey lights and magnesium flares turned the darkness toghastly vivid light, the fierce red and orange of bursting bombs andgrenades threw splashes of angry colour on the glistening wet parapets, the flat khaki caps of the British, the dark overcoats of the Germansstruggling and hacking in the barb-wires. The eye was confused withthe medley of leaping lights and shadows; the ear was dazed with theclamour and uproar of cracking rifles, screaming bullets, andshattering bombs, the oaths and yells, the shouted orders, the groansand outcries of the wounded. Then from overhead came a savage rush andshriek, a flash of light that showed vivid even amidst the confusion oflight, a harder, more vicious crash than all the other crashingreports, and the shrapnel ripped down along the line of the Germantrench that erupted struggling, hurrying knots of men. 

A call from the trench telephone, or the sound of the burst of bomb andrifle fire, had brought the gunners on the jump for their loadedpieces, and once more the guns were taking a hand. Shell after shellroared up overhead and lashed the ground with shrapnel, and for amoment the attack flinched and hung back and swayed uncertainly underthe cruel hail. For a moment only, and then it surged on again, seethed and eddied in agitated whirlpools amongst the stakes andstrands of the torturing wires, came on again, and with a roar of hateand frenzied triumph leaped at the low parapet. The parapet flamed androared again in gusts of rapid fire, and the front ranks of theattackers withered and went down in struggling heaps before it. Butthe ranks behind came on fiercely and poured in over the trench; thelights flickered and danced on plunging bayonets and polished butts;the savage voices of the killing machines were drowned in the moresavage clamour of the human fighter, and then . . . Comparative silencefell on the trench. 

The attack had succeeded, the Germans were in and, save for one littleknot of men who had escaped at the last minute, the defenders werekilled, wounded, or taken prisoners. The captured trench was shapedlike the curve of a tall, thin capital D, a short communication trenchleading in to either end from the main firing trench that formed theback of the D and a prolongation outwards from it. The curve was inGerman hands, but no sooner was this certain than the main trenchsprang to angry life. The Germans in the captured curve worked in adesperation of haste, pulling sandbags from what had been the face ofthe trench and heaving them into place to make a breastwork on the newfront, while reinforcements rushed across from the German side andopened fire at the main British trench a score of yards away. 

Then, before the gasping takers of the trench could clear the dead andwounded from under their feet, before they could refill their emptiedmagazines, or settle themselves to new footholds and elbow-rests, theBritish counter-attack was launched. It was ushered in by a shatteringburst of shrapnel. The word had passed to the gunners, careful andminute adjustments had been made, the muzzles had swung round afraction, and then, suddenly and quick as the men could fling in around, slam the breech and pull the firing lever, shell after shell hadleapt roaring on their way to sweep the trench that had been British, but now was enemy. For ten or fifteen seconds the shrapnel hailedfiercely on the cowering trench; then, at another word down thetelephone, the fire shut off abruptly, to re-open almost immediatelyfurther forward over the main German trenches. 

From the main British trench an officer leaped, another and anotherheaved themselves over the parapet, and in an instant the long, leveledge of the trench was crowded with scrambling, struggling men. With ahoarse yell they flung themselves forward, and the lost trench spouteda whirlwind of fire and lead to meet their rush. But the Germandefenders had no fair chance of resistance. Their new parapet was nothalf formed and offered no protection to the stream of bullets thatsleeted in on them from rifles and maxims on their flanks. Thecharging British infantry carried hand grenades and bombs and flungthem ahead of them as they ran, and, finally, there was no thicket ofbarb-wire to check the swing and impetus of the rush. The trench wasreached, and again the clamour of voices raised in fear and pain, thehoarse rancour of hate, the shrill agony of death, rose high on thesounds of battle. The rush swept up on the trench, engulfed it as awave engulfs the cleft on a rock beach, boiled and eddied about it, andthen . . . And then . . . Swept roaring over it, and on. Thecounter-attack had succeeded, and the victors were pushing theiradvantage home in an attack on the main German trench. The remnants ofthe German defenders were swept back, fighting hopelessly but none theless fiercely. Supports poured out to their assistance, and for a fullfive minutes the fight raged and swayed in the open between thetrenches and among the wire entanglements. The men who fell weretrampled, squirming, underfoot in the bloody mire and mud; the fightersstabbed and hacked and struck at short arm-length, fell even to usingfists and fingers when the press was too close for weapon play andswing. 

But the attack died out at last without the German entanglements beingpassed or their earthwork being reached. Here and there an odd man hadscrambled and torn a way through the wire, only to fall on or beforethe parapet. Others hung limp or writhing feebly to free themselvesfrom the clutching hooks of the wire. Both sides withdrew, panting andnursing their dripping wounds, to the shelter of their trenches, andboth left their dead sprawled in the trampled ooze or stayed to helptheir wounded crawling painfully back to cover. Immediately theBritish set about rebuilding their shattered trench and parapet; butbefore they had well begun the spades had to be flung down again andthe rifles snatched to repel another fierce assault. This time a stormof bombs, hand grenades, rifle grenades, and every other fiendishdevice of high-explosives, preceded the attack. The trench was rackedand rent and torn, sections were solidly blown in, and other sectionswere flung out bodily in yawning crevasses and craters. From end toend the line was wrapped in billowing clouds of reeking smoke, andstarred with bursts of fire. The defenders flattened themselves closeagainst the forward parapet that shook and trembled beneath them like alive thing under the rending blasts. The rifles still cracked up anddown the line; but, in the main, the soaking, clay-smeared men heldstill and hung on, grimly waiting and saving their full magazines forthe rush they knew would follow. It came at last, and the men breatheda sigh of relief at the escape it meant from the rain ofhigh-explosives. It was their turn now, and the roar of theirrifle-fire rang out and the bomb-throwers raised themselves to hurltheir carefully-saved missiles on the advancing mass. The mass reeledand split and melted under the fire, but fresh troops were behind andpushing it on, and once more it flooded in on the trench. . . . 

Again the British trench had become German, although here and therethroughout its length knots of men still fought on, unheeding how thefight had gone elsewhere in the line, and intent solely on their ownlittle circle of slaughter. 

But this time the German success was hardly made before it was blottedout. The British supports had been pushed up to the disputed point, and as the remnants of the last defenders straggled back they met thefierce rush of the new and fresh force. 

This time it was quicker work. The trench by now was shattered andwrecked out of all real semblance to a defensive work. The edge of thenew attack swirled up to it, lipped over and fell bodily into it. Fora bare minute the defence fought, but it was overborne and wiped out inthat time. The British flung in on top of the defenders like terriersinto a rat-pit, and the fighters snarled and worried and scuffled andclutched and tore at each other more like savage brutes than men. Thedefence was not broken or driven out--it was killed out; and lungingbayonet or smashing butt caught and finished the few that tried tostruggle and claw a way out up the slippery trench-sides. Hard on theheels of the victorious attackers came a swarm of men running andstaggering to the trench with filled sandbags over their shoulders. Asthe front of the attack passed on over the wrecked trench and pressedthe Germans back across the open, the sandbags were flung down andheaped scientifically in the criss-cross of a fresh breastwork. Othermen, laden with coils of wire and stakes and hammers, ran out in frontand fell to work erecting a fresh entanglement. In five minutes orten--for minutes are hard to count and tally at such a time and in suchwork--the new defence was complete, and the fighters in the open ranback and leapt over into cover. 

Once more a steady crackle of rifle-fire ran quivering up and down theline, and from their own trenches the Germans could see, in the lightof the flares, a new breastwork facing them, a new entanglement waitingto trap them, a steady stream of fire spitting and sparkling along theline. They could see, too, the heaped dead between the lines, and intheir own thinned ranks make some reckoning of the cost of theirattempt. 

The attempt was over. There were a few score dead lying in ones andtwos and little clumped heaps in the black mud; the disputed trench wasa reeking shambles of dead and wounded; the turn of thestretcher-bearers and the Red Cross workers had come. There would beanother column to add to the Casualty Lists presently, and anotherbundle of telegrams to be despatched to the 'Next of Kin. '

And to-morrow the official despatch would mention the matter coldly andtersely; and the papers would repeat it; and a million eyes would readwith little understanding . . . 'changed hands several times, finallyremaining in our possession. '

SHELLS

'_. . . To the right a violent artillery bombardment has been inprogress. _'--ACTUAL EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

No. 2 Platoon of the Royal Blanks was cooking its breakfast withconsiderable difficulty and an astonishing amount of cheerfulness whenthe first shell fell in front of their firing trench. It had rainedmost of the night, as indeed it had rained most of the past week or thepast month. All night long the men had stood on the firing step of thetrench, chilled and miserable in their sodden clothing, and sunk insoft sticky mud over the ankles. All night long they had peeped overthe parapet, or fired through the loopholes at the German trench ahundred yards off. And all night long they had been galled and stungby that 'desultory rifle fire' that the despatches mention so casuallyand so often, and that requires to be endured throughout a dragging dayand night before its ugliness and unpleasantness can be realised. 

No. 2 Platoon had two casualties for the night--a corporal who hadpaused too long in looking over the parapet while a star-shell flared, and 'caught it' neatly through the forehead, and a private who, in theact of firing through a loop-hole, had been hit by a bullet whichglanced off his rifle barrel and completed its resulting ricochet inthe private's eyes and head. There were other casualties further alongthe trench, but outside the immediate ken of No. 2 Platoon, until theywere assisted or carried past on their way to the ambulance. 

Just after daybreak the desultory fire and the rain together had almostceased, and No. 2 Platoon set about trying to coax cooking fires out ofdamp twigs and fragments of biscuit boxes which had been carefullytreasured and protected in comparative dryness inside the men'sjackets. The breakfast rations consisted of Army bread--heavy lumps ofa doughy elasticity one would think only within the range of badness ofa comic paper's 'Mrs. Newlywed'--flint-hard biscuits, cheese, and tea. 

'The only complaint against the rations bein' too much plum jam, ' saida clay-smeared private, quoting from a much-derided 'Eye-witness'report as he dug out a solid streak of uncooked dough from the centreof his half-loaf and dropped it in the brazier. 

Then the first shell landed. It fell some yards outside the parapet, and a column of sooty black smoke shot up and hung heavily in the dampair. No. 2 Platoon treated it lightly. 

'Good mornin', ' said one man cheerfully, nodding towards the blackcloud. 'An' we 'ave not used Pears' soap. '

'Bless me if it ain't our old friend the Coal Box, ' said another. 'We'aven't met one of 'is sort for weeks back. '

'An' here's 'is pal Whistling Willie, ' said a third, and they satlistening to the rise-and-fall whistling _s-s-sh-s-s-sh_ of ahigh-angle shell. As the whistle rose to a shriek, the group of menhalf made a move to duck, but they were too late, and the shell burstwith a thunderous bang just short of the front parapet. Mud and lumpsof earth splashed and rattled down into the trench, and fragments ofiron hurtled singing overhead. 

The men cursed angrily. The brazier had been knocked over by a hugeclod, half-boiling water was spilt, and, worst of all, the precious drywood had fallen in the mud and water of the trench bottom. But the mensoon had other things than a lost breakfast to think of. A shrapnelcrashed overhead and a little to the right, and a sharp scream thatdied down into deep groans told of the first casualty. Another shell, and then another, roared up and smashed into the soft ground behind thetrench, hurting no one, but driving the whole line to crouch low in thenarrow pit. 

'Get down and lie close everyone, ' shouted the young officer of No. 2Platoon, but the 'crump-crump-crump' of another group of falling shellsspoke sterner and more imperative orders than his. For half an hourthe big shells fell with systematic and regular precision along theline of the front trench, behind it on the bare ground, and furtherback towards the supports' trench. The shooting was good, but so werethe trenches--deep and narrow, and steep-sided, with dug-outs scoopedunder the bank and strong traverses localising the effect of any shellthat fell exactly on the trench. There were few casualties, and theRoyal Blanks were beginning to congratulate themselves on getting offso lightly as the fire slackened and almost died away. 

With the rest of the line No. 2 Platoon was painfully moving from itscramped position and trying to stamp and shake the circulation backinto its stiffened limbs, when there came a sudden series of swishingrushes and sharp vicious cracks overhead, and ripping thuds of shrapnelacross and across the trench. The burst of fire from the light gunswas excellently timed. Their high velocity and flat trajectory landedthe shells on their mark without any of the whistling rush of approachthat marked the bigger shells and gave time to duck into any availablecover. The one gust of light shells caught a full dozen men--as manyas the half-hour's work of the big guns. 

Then the heavies opened again as accurately as before and twice asfast. The trench began to yawn in wide holes, and its sides to crumbleand collapse. No. 2 Platoon occupied a portion of the trench that ranout in a blunted angle, and it caught the worst of the fire. One shellfalling just short of the front parapet dug a yawning hole and drove inthe forward wall of the trench in a tumbled slide of mud and earth. Adug-out and the two men occupying it were completely buried, and theyoung officer scurried and pushed along to the place shouting forspades. A party fell to work with frantic haste; but all their energywas wasted. The occupants of the buried dug-out were dead when at lastthe spades found them . . . And broken finger-nails and bleedingfinger-tips told a grisly tale of the last desperate struggle forescape and for the breath of life. The officer covered the oneconvulsed face and starting eyes with his handkerchief, and a privateplaced a muddy cap over the other. 

'Get back to your places and get down, ' said the officer quietly, andthe men crawled back and crouched low again. For a full hour the linelay under the flail of the big shells that roared and shrieked overheadand thundered crashing along the trenches. For a full hour the menbarely moved, except to shift along from a spot where the shaken andcrumbling parapet gave insufficient cover from the hailing shrapnelthat poured down at intervals, and from the bullets that swept in andsmacked venomously into the back of the trench through the shell-riftsin the parapet. 

A senior officer made his way slowly along the sodden and quakingtrench. He halted beside the young officer and spoke to him a fewminutes, asking what the casualties were and hoping vaguely 'they wouldease off presently. '

'Can't our own guns do anything?' asked the youngster; 'or won't theylet us get out and have a go at them?'

The senior nodded towards the bare stretch of muddy plough before theirtrench, and the tangle of barbed wire beyond. 

'How many men d'you suppose would get there?' he asked. 

'Some would, ' said the youngster eagerly, 'and anything would be betterthan sticking here and getting pounded to pieces. '

'We'll see, ' said the major moving off. 'They may ask us to try itpresently. And if not we'll pull through, I dare say. See that themen keep down, and keep down yourself, Grant. Watch out for a rushthrough. This may be a preparation for something of the sort. '

He moved along, and the lad flattened himself again against the side ofthe wet trench. 

A word from a man near him turned him round. '. . . A 'tilleryObservin' Officer comin'. P'raps our guns are goin' for 'em at last. '

The gunner officer stumbled along the trench towards them. Behind himcame his signaller, a coil of wire and a portable telephone in aleather case slung over his shoulder. No. 2 Platoon watched theirapproach with eager anticipation, and strained ears and attention tocatch the conversation that passed between their officer and theartilleryman. And a thrill of disappointment pulsed down the line atthe gunner's answer to the first question put to him. 'No, ' he said, 'I have orders not to fire unless they come out of the trenches toattack. We'll give 'em gyp if they try it. My guns are laid on theirfront trench and I can sweep the whole of this front with shrapnel. '

'But why not shut up their guns and put a stop to this?' asked theofficer, and his platoon fervently echoed the question in their hearts. 

'Not my pidgin, ' said the gunner, cautiously peering through thefield-glasses he levelled through a convenient loophole. 'That's theHeavies' job. I'm Field, and my guns are too light to say much tothese fellows. Look out!' and he stooped low in the trench as therising rush of sound told of a shell coming down near them. 

'That's about an eight-inch, ' he said, after the shell had fallen witha crash behind them, a spout of earth and mud leaping up and spatteringdown over them and fragments singing and whizzing overhead. 'Just tapin on the wire, Jackson, and raise the Battery. '

The telephonist opened his case and lifted out his instrument, gropedalong the trench wall a few yards and found his wire, joined up to hisinstruments, dashed off a series of dots and dashes on the 'buzzer, 'and spoke into his mouthpiece. No. 2 Platoon watched in fascinatedsilence and again gave all their attention to listening as theArtillery officer took the receiver. 

'. . . That you, Major? . . . Yes, this is Arbuthnot. . . . In theforward firing trench. . . . Yes, pretty lively . . . Big stuffthey're flinging mostly, and some fourteen-pounder shrap. . . . No, nosigns of a move in their trenches. . . . All right, sir, I'll takecare. I can't see very well from here, so I'm going to move along abit. . . . Very well, sir, I'll tap in again higher up. . . . Good-bye. ' He handed back the instrument to the telephonist. 'Pack upagain, ' he said, 'and come along. '

When he had gone No. 2 Platoon turned eagerly on the telephonist, andhe ran a gauntlet of anxious questions as he followed the ForwardOfficer. Nine out of ten of the questions were to the same purpose, and the gunner answered them with some sharpness. He turned angrily atlast on one man who put the query in broad Scots accent. 

'No, ' he said tartly, 'we ain't tryin' to silence their guns. An' ifyou partickler wants to know why we ain't--well, p'raps them Glasgowtownies o' yours can tell you. '

He went on and No. 2 Platoon sank to grim silence. The meaning of thegunner's words were plain enough to all, for had not the papers spokenfor weeks back of the Clyde strikes and the shortage of munitions? Andthe thoughts of all were pithily put in the one sentence by a privateof No. 2 Platoon. 

'I'd stop cheerful in this blanky 'ell for a week, ' he said slowly, 'ifso be I 'ad them strikers 'ere alongside me gettin' the same dose. '

All this time there had been a constant although not a heavy rifle fireon the trenches. It had not done much damage, because the Royal Blankswere exposing themselves as little as possible and keeping low down intheir narrow trenches. But now the German rifles began to speakfaster, and the fire rose to a dull roar. The machine-guns joined in, their sharp rat-tat-tat sounding hard and distinct above the rifles. As the volume of rifle fire increased, so, for a minute, did the shellfire, until the whole line of the Royal Blanks' trenches was vibratingto the crash of the shells and humming with rifle bullets which whizzedoverhead or smacked with loud whip-crack reports into the parapet. 

The officer of No. 2 Platoon hitched himself higher on the parapet andhoisted a periscope over it. Almost instantly a bullet struck it, shattering the glass to fragments. He lowered it and hastily fitted anew glass, pausing every few moments to bob his head up over theparapet and glance hastily across at the German trench. A second timehe raised his instrument to position and in less than a minute it wasshot away for a second time. 

The Artillery officer came hurrying and stumbling back along thetrench, his telephonist labouring behind him. They stopped at theplace where they had tapped in before and the telephonist busiedhimself connecting up his instrument. The Artillery officer flunghimself down beside the Platoon commander. 'My confounded wire cutagain, ' he panted, 'just when I want it too. Sounds as if they meant arush, eh?' The infantryman nodded. 'Will they stop shelling beforethey rush?' he shouted. 

'Not till their men are well out in front. Their guns can keep goingover their heads for a bit. Are you through, Jackson? Tell theBattery to "eyes front. " It looks like an attack. '

The telephonist repeated the message, listened a moment and commenced, 'The Major says, sir----' when his officer interrupted sharply, 'Threerounds gun-fire--quick. '

'Three rounds gun-fire--quick, sir, ' bellowed the telephonist into hismouthpiece. 

'Here they come, lads. Let 'em have it, ' yelled the Platoon commander, and commenced himself to fire through a loophole. 

At the same moment there came from the rear the quick thudding reportsof the British guns, the rush of their shells overhead, and the sharpcrash of their shells over the German parapets. 

'All fired, sir, ' called the telephonist. 

'Battery fire one second, ' the Observing Officer shouted withoutturning his head from his watch over the parapet. 

'Number one fired--two fired--three fired, ' the signaller calledrapidly, and the Observing Officer watched narrowly the whitecotton-wool clouds of the bursting shrapnel of his guns. 

'Number three, ten minutes more right--all guns, droptwenty-five--repeat, ' he ordered, and in swift obedience the guns beganto drop their shrapnel showers, sweeping along the ground in front ofthe German trench. 

But the expected rush of Germans hung fire. A line of bobbing headsand shoulders had showed above their parapet and only a few scatteredgroups had clambered over its top. 

'They're beat, ' shouted the infantry officer, exultingly. 'They'redodging back. Give it to 'em, boys--give it--_ow_!' He broke off andducked down with a hand clapped to his cheek where a bullet had scoredits way. 

'Get down! get down! Make your men get down, ' said the gunner officerrapidly. 'It's all . . . '

Again there came the swishing rush of the light shells, a series ofquick-following bangs, and a hail of shrapnel tearing across thetrench, before the men had time to duck. 

'All a false alarm--just a dodge to get your men's heads up withinreach of their Fizz-Bangs' shrapnel, ' said the artilleryman, and calledto the signaller. 'All guns raise twenty-five. Section fire fiveseconds. . . . Hullo--hit?' he continued to the Platoon officer, as henoticed him wiping a smear of blood from his cheek. 

'Just a nice little scratch, ' said the lad, grinning. 'Enough to letme swank about being wounded and show off a pretty scar to my best girlwhen the war's over. '

'Afraid that last shrapnel burst gave some of your fellows more'n apretty scar, ' said the gunner. 'But I suppose I'd better slow my gunsup again. . . . Jackson, tell them the attack's evidentlystopped--section fire ten seconds. '

'Can't you keep on belting 'em for a bit?' asked the Platoon officer. 'Might make 'em ease up on us. '

The gunner shook his head regretfully. 

'I'd ask nothing better, ' he said. 'I could just give those trenchesbeans. But our orders are strict, and we daren't waste a round onanything but an attack. I'll bet that's my Major wanting to know if hecan't slack off a bit more, ' he continued, as the signaller calledsomething about 'Wanted to speak here, sir. '

He went to the instrument and held a short conversation. 'Told youso, ' he said, when he returned to the infantry officer. 'No attack--noshells. We're stopping again. '

'Doesn't seem to be too much stop about the Germs, ' grumbled theinfantryman, as another series of crackling shells shook the groundclose behind them. He moved down the line speaking a few words hereand there to the crouching men of his platoon. 

'This is getting serious, ' he said when he came back to his place. 'There's more than the half of my lot hit, and the most of them prettybadly. These shrapnel bullets and shell splinters make a shocking messof a wound, y'know. '

'Yes, ' said the gunner grimly, 'I know. '

'A perfectly brutal mess, ' the subaltern repeated. 'A bullet now ismore or less decent, but those shells of theirs, they don't give a mana chance to pull through. '

'Ours are as bad, if that's any satisfaction to you, ' said the gunner. 

'I s'pose so, ' agreed the subaltern. 'Ghastly sort of game altogether, isn't it? Those poor fellows of mine now--the killed, I mean. Thinkof their fathers and mothers and wives or sweethearts----'

'I'd rather not, ' said the gunner. 'And I shouldn't advise you to. Better not to think of these things. '

'I wish they'd come again, ' said the Platoon commander. 'It would stopthe shells for a bit perhaps. They're getting on my nerves. One's sohelpless against them, sticking here waiting to know where the nextwill drop. And they don't even give a fellow the ordinary four to onechance of a casualty being a wound only. They make such a cruel messysmash of a fellow. . . . Are you going?'

'Must find that break in my wire, ' said the gunner, and presently heand the telephonist ploughed off along the trench. 

The bombardment continued with varying intensity throughout the day. There was no grand finale, no spectacular rush or charge, no crashingassault, no heroic hand-to-hand combats--no anything but the long-drawnagony of lying still and being hammered by the crashing shells. Thiswas no 'artillery preparation for the assault, ' although the RoyalBlanks did not know that and so dare not stir from the danger zone ofthe forward trench. They were not even to have the satisfaction ofgiving back some of the punishment they had endured, or the glory--aglory carefully concealed from their friends at home, and mostly lostby the disguising or veiling of their identity in the newspapers, butstill a glory--of taking a trench or making a successful attack orcounter-attack. It was merely another 'heavy artillery bombardment, 'lived through and endured all unknown, as so many have been endured. 

The Royal Blanks were relieved at nightfall when the fire had dieddown. The Artillery Observing Officer was just outside thecommunication trench at the relief hour and saw the casualties beinghelped or carried out. A stretcher passed and the figure on it had amuddy and dark-stained blanket spread over, and an officer's cap andbinoculars on top. 

'An officer?' asked the gunner. 'Who is it?' 'Mr. Grant, sir, ' saidone of the stretcher-bearers dully. 'No. 2 Platoon. '

The gunner noted the empty sag of the blanket where the head andshoulders should have been outlined and checked the half-formedquestion of 'Badly hit?' to 'How was it?'

'Shell, sir. A Fizz-Bang hit the parapet just where 'e was lyin'. Caught 'im fair. '

The bearers moved on, leaving the gunner groping in his memory for asentence in the youngster's last talk he had heard. "Ghastly business. . . Cruel messy smash, ' he murmured. 

'Beg pardon, sir?' said the telephonist. 

The Forward Officer made no answer but continued to stare after thedisappearing stretcher-bearers. The signaller shuffled his feet in themud and hitched up the strap of the instrument on his shoulder. 

'I suppose it's all over now, sir, ' he said. 

'Yes, all over--except for his father, or mother, or sweetheart, ' saidthe officer absently. 

The signaller stared. 'I meant the shellin', sir. '

'Oh--ah, yes; the shelling, Jackson. Yes, I dare say that's over forto-night, since they seem to have stopped now. '

'P'raps we might see about some food, sir, ' said the signaller. 

'Food--to be sure, ' said the officer briskly. 'Eat, drink, and bemerry, Jackson, for--I'm hungry too, now I think of it. And, oh Lord, I'm tired. '

No. 2 Platoon were tired too, as they filed wearily out by thecommunication trench, tired and worn out mentally and physically--andyet not too tired or too broken for a light word or a jest. From thedarkness behind them a German flare soared up and burst, throwing upbushes and shattered buildings, sandbag parapets, broken tree-stumps, sticks and stones in luminous-edged silhouette. A machine-gun burstinto a stutter of fire, the reports sounding faint at first and louderand louder as the muzzle swept round in its arc. 'Ssh-sh-sh-sh, ' thebullets swept overhead, and No. 2 Platoon halted and crouched low inthe shallow communication trench. 

'Oh, shut it, blast ye, ' growled one of the men disgustedly. 'Ain't we'ad enough for one day?'

'It's only 'im singin' 'is little evenin' hymn as usual, ' said another. 

'Just sayin' 'is good-bye an' sendin' a few partin' sooveniers'; andanother sang 'Say aw rev-wore, but not good-bye. '

'Stop that howling there, ' a sergeant called down the line, 'and stopsmoking those cigarettes and talking. '

'Certainly, sergeant, ' a voice came back. 'An' please sergeant, willyou allow us to keep on breathin'?'

The light died, and the line rose and moved on, squelching softly inthe mud. A man clapped a hand to his pocket, half halted and exclaimedin annoyance. 'Blest if I 'aven't left my mouth-organ back there, ' hesaid. 'Hutt!' said his next file. 'Be glad ye've a mouth left, or ahead to have a mouth. It might be worse, an' ye might be left backthere yerself decoratin' about ten square yards of trench. '

'Tut-tut-tut-tut' went the maxim behind them again. 

'Tutt-tutt yourself, you stammer-an'-spit blighter, ' said thedisconsolate mouth-organ loser, and 'D'you think we can chance a smokeyet?' as the platoon moved out on the road and behind the shelter ofsome ruined house-walls. 

Platoon by platoon the company filed out and formed up roughly behindthe houses. The order to move came at last and the ranked fours swungoff, tramping slowly and stolidly in silence until some one struck up asong--

 '_Crump, crump, crump, says the big bustin' shells----_

A chorus of protest and a 'Give the shells a rest' stopped the song onthe first line, and it was to the old regimental tune, the canteen andsing-song favourite, 'The Sergeant's Return, ' that the Royal Blankssettled itself into its pack shoulder-straps and tramped on. 

 I'm the same ol' feller that you always used to know-- Oh! Oh! you know you used to know-- An' it's years since we parted way down on Plymouth Hoe-- Oh! Oh! So many years ago. I've roamed around the world, but I've come back to you, For my 'eart 'as never altered, my 'eart is ever true. [Prolonged and noisy imitation of a kiss. ] _Ain't_ that got the taste you always used to know?

The colonel was talking to the adjutant in the road as the companiesmoved past, and he noted with some concern the ragged ranks andlistless movement of the first lot to pass. 

'They're looking badly tucked up, ' he said. 

'They've had a cruel day, ' said the adjutant. 

'Yes, the worst kind, ' agreed the O. C. 'And I doubt if they can standthat sort of thing so well now. The old regiment is not what it usedto be. We're so filled up with recruits now--youngsters too. . . . Here's B company--about the rawest of the lot and caught the worst ofit to-day. How d'you think they stand it?'

But it was B company that answered the question for itself and the oldregiment, singing the answer softly to itself and the O. C. As ittrudged past--

 I'm the same ol' feller that you always used to know-- Oh! Oh! you know you used to know. . . . 

'Gad, Malcolm, ' said the O. C. Straightening his own shoulders, 'they'lldo, they'll do. '

 . . . My 'eart 'as never altered, my 'eart is ever true, the remnant of No. 2 Platoon sang past him. 

'They haven't shaken us yet, ' said the O. C. Proudly. 

'Tutt, tutt!' grumbled the maxim faintly. 'Tutt, tutt!'

THE MINE

'_. . . A mine was successfully exploded under a section of the enemy'strench. . . . _'--ACTUAL EXTRACT FROM AN OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

Work on the sap-head had been commenced on what the Captain of theSappers called 'a beautiful night, ' and what anyone else outside alunatic asylum would have described with the strongest adjectivesavailable in exactly the opposite sense. A piercing wind was blowingin gusts of driving sleet and rain, it was pitch dark--'black as theinside of a cow, ' as the Corporal put it--and it was bitterly cold. But, since all these conditions are exactly those most calculated tomake difficult the work of an enemy's sentries and look-outs, and thefirst work of sinking a shaft is one which it is highly desirableshould be unobserved by an enemy, the Sapper Captain's satisfaction maybe understood. 

The sap-head was situated amongst the ruins of a cottage a few yardsbehind the forward firing trench, and by the time a wet daylight haddawned the Sappers had dug themselves well underground, had securelyplanked up the walls of the shaft, and had cut a connecting galleryfrom the ruins to the communication trench. All this meant that theirwork was fairly free from observation, and the workers reasonably safefrom bombs and bullets, so that the officer in charge had good causefor the satisfaction with which he made his first report. 

His first part of the work had been a matter of plans and maps, ofcompass and level, of observing the ground--incidentally dodging thebullets of the German snipers who caught glimpses of his crawlingform--by day, and of intricate and exact figuring and calculating bynight, in the grimy cellar of another ruined house by the light of acandle, stuck in an empty bottle. 

Thereafter he spent all his waking hours (and many of his sleeping onesas well) in a thick suit of clayey mud; he lived like a mole in hismine gallery or his underground cellar, saw the light only when heemerged to pass from his work to his sleep or meals, and back to hiswork, and generally gave himself, his whole body and brain and being, to the correct driving of a shallow burrow straight to the selectedpoint under the enemy trench a hundred and odd yards away. He was ayoungish man, and this was the first job of any importance that hadbeen wholly and solely entrusted to him. It was not only his anxietyto make a creditable showing, but he was keen on the work for thework's own sake, and he revelled in the creative sense of the trueartist. The mine was his. He had first suggested it, he had surveyedit, and plotted it, and measured and planned and worked it out onpaper; and now, when it came to the actual pick-and-shovel work, hesupervised and directed and watched each hour of work, and each yard ofprogress. 

It was tricky work, too, and troublesome. At first the ground was goodstiff clay that the spades bit out in clean mouthfuls, and that left afair firm wall behind. But that streak ran out in the second day'sworking, and the mine burrowed into some horrible soft crumbly soilthat had to be held up and back by roof and wall of planking. TheSubaltern took a party himself and looted the wrecks of houses--therewas no lack of these in the village just behind the lines--ofroof-beams and flooring, and measured and marked them for sawing intolengths, and would have taken a saw with pleasure himself. 

Then he dived cheerfully into the oozing wet burrow and superintendedthe shoring up, and re-started the men to digging, and emerged a momentto see more planking passed down. He came in fact dangerously near tomaking a nuisance of himself, and some of his men who had been sappingand mining for wet and weary months past were inclined to resent quiteso much fussing round and superintendence. But the Corporal put thatright. He was an elderly man with a nasty turn of temper that had gothim into almost as many troubles in his service as his knowledge, experience, and aptitude for hard work and responsibility had got himout of. 

'Leave the lad be, ' he had said when some of the party had passedgrumbling remarks about 'too bloomin' much fuss an' feathers over astraight simple bloomin' job. ' The Corporal had promptly squashed thatopinion. 'Leave the lad be, ' he said. 'He's young to the job, mebbe, but he's not such a simple fool as some that take this for a simplejob. It's not goin' to be all that simple, as you'll find beforeyou're done. '

He was right, too. The crumbling soil was one little difficultypromptly and easily met. The next was more troublesome. The soil grewwetter and more wet until at last the men were working ankle deep inwater. The further the mine went the wetter it became. The men workedon, taking their turn at the narrow face, shovelling out the wet muckand dragging it back to the shaft and up and out and away by thecommunication trench. They squeezed aside in silence when theSubaltern pushed in to inspect the working, and waited with side winksto one another to see what he would do to overcome the waterdifficulty. 'Pumps' would of course have been the simple answer, butthe men knew as well as the Subaltern knew that pumps were not to behad at that particular time and place for love or money, and that allthe filling of all the 'indents' in the R. E. Would not produce onesingle efficient pump from store. 

The Subaltern did not trouble with indent forms or stores. He had hadsomething of a fight to get a grudging permission for his mine, and hefelt it in his bones that if he worried the big chiefs too much withrequisitions he would be told to abandon the mine. He shut his teethtight at the thought. It was his mine and he was going to see itthrough, if he had to bale the water out with a tea-cup. 

He made a quick cast through the shell-wrecked village, drew blank, satfor fifteen minutes on the curb of a rubble-choked well and thoughthard, jumped up and called the Corporal to provide him with four menand some odd tools, and struck back across muddy and shell-crateredfields to the nearest farm. The farmer, who had remained in possessiondespite the daily proximity of bursting shells, a shrapnel-smashed tileroof, and a gaping hole where one house-corner should have been, madesome objection to the commandeering of his old-fashioned farm pump. Hewas at first supported in this by the officer in charge of the menbilleted in the barn and sheds, but the Sapper explained the urgency ofhis need and cunningly clinched the argument by reminding the Infantryofficer that probably he and his men would soon be installed in thetrenches from which the mine ran, and that he--the Sapper--although hewas not supposed to mention it, might just hint that his mine was onlyhurrying to forestall an enemy mine which was judged to be approachingthe trench the Infantry officer would presently occupy. This last wasa sheer invention of the moment, but it served excellently, and theSapper and his party bore off their pump in triumph. It was latererected in the mine shaft, and the difficulty of providing sufficientpiping to run from the pump to the waterlogged part of the mine was metby a midnight visit to the house where Headquarters abode and thewholesale removal of gutters and rain-pipes. As Headquarters had itsprincipal residence in a commodious and cobwebby cellar, the absence ofthe gutters fortunately passed without remark, and the sentry whowatched the looting and the sergeant to whom he reported it were quitesatisfied by the presence of an Engineer officer and his calm assurancethat it was 'all right--orders--an Engineers' job. '

The pump did its work excellently, and a steady stream of muddy watergushed from its nozzle and flowed down the Headquarters gutter-pipes toa selected spot well behind the trenches. Unfortunately the pump, being old-fashioned, was somewhat noisy, and all the packing and oilingand tinkering failed to silence its clank-clink, clank-clink, as itsarm rose and fell. 

The nearest German trench caught the clank-clink, and by a simpleprocess of deduction and elimination arrived at its meaning and itslocation. The pump and the pumpers led a troubled life after that. Snipers kept an unsteady but never silent series of bullets smackinginto the stones of the ruin, whistling over the communication trench, and 'whupp'-ing into the mud around both. A light gun took a hand andplumped a number of rounds each day into the crumbling walls andrubbish-heaps of stone and brick, and burst shrapnel all over the lot. The Sappers dodged the snipers by keeping tight and close to cover;they frustrated the direct-hitting 'Fizz-Bang' shells by a stoutbarricade of many thicknesses of sandbags bolstering up the fragment ofwall that hid their shaft and pump, and finally they erected a low roofover the works and sandbagged that secure against the shrapnel. Therewere casualties of course, but these are always in the way of businesswith the Sappers and came as a matter of course. The Germans broughtup a trench-mortar next and flung noisy and nerve-wreckinghigh-explosive bombs into and all round the ruin, bursting down all theremaining walls except the sandbagged one and scoring a few morecasualties until the forward trench installed a trench-mortar of theirown, and by a generous return of two bombs to the enemy's one put theGerman out of action. A big _minnenwerfer_ came into play next, andbecause it could throw a murderous-sized bomb from far behind theGerman trench it was too much for the British trench-mortar to tackle. This brought the gunners into the game, and the harassed infantry (whowere coming to look on the Sapper Subaltern and his works as anunmitigated nuisance and a most undesirable acquaintance who drew morethan a fair share of enemy fire on them) appealed to the guns to ridthem of their latest tormentor. An Artillery Observing Officer spent aperilous hour or two amongst the shrapnel and snipers' bullets on topof the sandbagged wall, until he had located the _minnenwerfer_. Thenabout two minutes' telephoned talk to the Battery and ten minutes ofspouting lyddite volcanoes finished the _minnenwerfer_ trouble. Butall this above-ground work was by way of an aside to the SapperSubaltern. He was far too busy with his mine gallery to worry aboutthe doings of gunners and bomb-throwers and infantry and such-likefellows. When these people interfered with his work they were anuisance of course, but he always managed to find a working party forthe sandbagging protective work without stopping the job underground. 

So the gallery crept steadily on. They had to carry the tunnel ratherclose to the surface because at very little depth they struck morewater than any pumps, much less their single farmyard one, could copewith. The nearness to the surface made a fresh difficulty andnecessitated the greatest care in working under the ground between thetrenches, because here there were always deep shell-holes and cratersto be avoided or floored with the planking that made the tunnel roof. So the gallery had to be driven carefully at a level below the dangerof exposure through a shell-hole and above the depth at which the waterlay. This meant a tunnel too low to stand or even kneel in with astraight back, and the men, kneeling in mud, crouched back on theirheels and with rounded back and shoulders, struck their spades forwardinto the face and dragged the earth out spadeful by spadeful. Despitethe numbing cold mud they knelt in, the men, stripped to shirts withrolled sleeves and open throats, streamed rivulets of sweat as theyworked; for the air was close and thick and heavy, and the exertion inthe cramped space was one long muscle-racking strain. 

Once the roof and walls caved in, and three men were imprisoned. Thecollapse came during the night, fortunately, and, still morefortunately behind the line and parapet of the forward trench. TheSubaltern flung himself and his men on the muddy wreckage in frantichaste to clear an opening and admit air to the imprisoned men. It tooktime, a heart-breaking length of time; and it was with a horrible dreadin his heart that the Subaltern at last pushed in to the uncoveredopening and crawled along the tunnel, flashing his electric torchbefore him. Half-way to the end he felt a draught of cold air, and, promptly extinguishing his lamp, saw a hole in the roof. His men werealive all right, and not only alive but keeping on hard at work at theend of the tunnel. When the collapse came they had gone back to wheretheir roof lay across the bottom of a shell-hole, pulled a plank out, and--gone back to work. 

When the tunnel reached a point under the German parapet it was turnedsharp to left and right, forming a capital T with the cross-piecerunning roughly along the line of trench and parapet. Here there wasneed of the utmost deliberation and caution. A pick could not be used, and even a spade had to be handled gently, in case the sounds ofworking should reach the Germans overhead. In some places theSubaltern could actually hear the movements and footsteps of the enemyjust above him. 

Twice the diggers disturbed a dead German, buried evidently under theparapet. Once a significant crumbling of the earth and fall of a fewheavy clods threatened a collapse where the gallery was under the edgeof the trench. The spot was hastily but securely shored up withinfinite caution and the least possible sound, and after that theSubaltern had the explosive charges brought along and connected up inreadiness. Then, if the roof collapsed or their work were discovered, the switch at the shaft could still be pressed, the wires would stillcarry the current, and the mine would be exploded. 

At last the Subaltern decided that everything was ready. He carefullyplaced his charges, connected up his wires again, cleared out histools, and emerged to report 'all ready. '

Now the 'touching off' of a good-sized mine is not a matter to be donelightly or without due and weighty authority, and that because more ismeant to result from it than the upheaval of some square yards of earthand the destruction of so many yards of enemy trench. The mine itself, elaborate and labour-making as it may have been, is, after all, only ameans to an end. That end may be the capture of a portion of the ruinsof the trench, it may be the destruction of an especially strong anddangerous 'keep, ' a point of resistance or an angle for attack. It mayeven be a mine to destroy a mine which is known to be tunnelling intoour own trenches, but in any case the explosion is usually a signal forattack from one side or the other, and therefore requires all the usualelaborate arrangements of reinforcements and supports and so on. Therefore the Sapper Subaltern, when he had finished his work and madehis report, had nothing to do but sit down and wait until otherpeople's preparations were made, and he received orders to complete hiswork by utterly and devastatingly destroying it. The Subaltern foundthis wait about the most trying part of the whole affair, moreespecially since he had for a good many days and nights had so much tooccupy his every moment. 

He received word at last of the day and hour appointed for theexplosion, and had the honour of a visit of inspection from a verysuperior officer who pored long and painstakingly over the paper plans, put a great many questions, even went the length of walking down thecommunication trench and peering down the entrance shaft, and lookingover the sandbagged wall through a periscope at the section of Germantrench marked down for destruction. Then he complimented the Subalternon his work, declined once again the offer of a muddy mackintosh and aninvitation to crawl down the mine, and went off. The Subaltern saw himoff the premises, returned to the shaft and donned the mackintosh, andcrawled off up his tunnel once more. 

Somehow, now that the whole thing was finished and ready, he felt apang of reluctance to destroy it and so fulfil its destiny. As hecrawled along, he noted each little bit of shoring-up and supportingplanks, each rise and fall in the floor, each twist and angle in thedirection, and recalled the infinite labour of certain sections, hisglows of satisfaction at the speed of progress at the easy bits, hisimpatience at the slow and difficult portions. It seemed as if he hadbeen building that tunnel for half a lifetime, had hardly ever doneanything else but build it or think about building it. And now, to-morrow it was all to be destroyed. He recalled with a thrill ofboyish pleasure the word of praise from the Corporal--a far greaterpleasure, by the way, than he had derived from the Great One'scompliments--the praise of one artist to another, the recognition ofgood work done, by one who himself had helped in many good works andknew well of what he spoke. 'She's done, sir, ' the Corporal had said. 'And if I may say so, sir, she's a credit to you. A mighty tricky job, sir, and I've seen plenty with long years in the Service that would ha'been stumped at times. I'm glad to have had a hand in it wi' you, sir. And all the men feel the same way about it. '

Ah well, the Subaltern thought as he halted at the joint of theT-piece, none of them felt the same about it as he himself did. Hesquatted there a moment, listening to the drip of water that was theonly sound. Suddenly his heart leapt . . . Was it the only sound?What was that other, if it could be called a sound? It was a senserather, an indefinable blending of senses of hearing and feel andtouch--a faint, barely perceptible 'thump, thump, ' like the beat of aman's heart in his breast. He snapped off the light of his electriclamp and crouched breathless in the darkness, straining his ears tohear. He was soon satisfied. He had not lived these days past withthe sound of digging in his ears by day and his dreams by night not torecognise the blows of a pick. There . . . They had stopped now; andin imagination he pictured the digger laying down the pick to shovelout the loosened earth. Then, after a pause, the measured thump, thumpwent on again. The Subaltern crawled along first one arm of thecross-section and then the other, halting every now and then to placehis ear to the wet planking or the wetter earth. He located at lastthe point nearest to the sound, and without more waste of time scurriedoff down his tunnel to daylight. 

He was back in the mine again in less than half an hour--a bare thirtyminutes, but each minute close packed with concentrated essence ofthought and action. 

The nearest trench telephone had put him in touch with BattalionHeadquarters, and through them with Brigade, Divisional, and GeneralHeadquarters. He had told his story and asked for his orders clearly, quickly, and concisely. The Germans were countermining. Their tunnelcould not possibly miss ours, and, by the sound, would break through inthirty to sixty minutes. What were his orders? It took some littletime for the orders to come, mainly because--although he knew nothingof it--his mine was part of a scheme for a general attack, and generalattacks are affairs that cannot be postponed or expedited as easily asa cold lunch. But the Subaltern filled in the time of waiting, andwhen the orders did come he was ready for them or any other. They wereclear and crisp--he was to fire the mine, but only at the latestpossible minute. That was all he got, and indeed all he wanted; and, since they did not concern him, there is no need here to tell of theswirl of other orders that buzzed and ticked and talked by fieldtelegraph and telephone for miles up and down and behind the Britishline. 

Before these orders had begun to take shape or coherency as a whole, the Subaltern was back listening to the thump, thump of the Germanpicks, and busily completing his preparations. It was near noon, andperhaps the workers would stop for a meal, which would give anotherhour for troops to be pushed up or whatever else the Generals wantedtime for. It might even be that a fall of their roof, an extra inflowof water to their working, any one of the scores of troubles thathamper and hinder underground mining might stop the crawling advance ofthe German sappers for a day or two and allow the Subaltern's mine toplay its appointed part at the appointed time of the grand attack. 

But meantime the Subaltern took no chances. First he connected up ashort switch which in the last extreme of haste would allow him withone touch of his finger to blow up his mine and himself with it. Heburied or concealed the wires connecting the linked charges with theswitch outside so as to have a chance of escape himself. He opened aportable telephone he had carried with him and joined up to the wire hehad also carried in, and so was in touch with his Corporal and theworld of the aboveground. All these things he did himself becausethere was no need to risk more than one man in case of a quickexplosion. Then, his preparations complete, he sat down to wait and tolisten to the thudding picks of the Germans. They were very near now, and with his ear to the wall the Subaltern could hear the shovels nowas well as the picks. He shut his lamp off after a last look at hisswitch, his revolver, and the glistening walls and mud-ooze floor ofhis tunnel, and sat still in the darkness. Once he whispered an answerinto the telephone to his Corporal, and once he flicked his lamp on aninstant to glance at the watch on his wrist. Then he crouched stilland silent again. The thumping of his heart nearly drowned the thud ofthe picks, he was shivering with excitement, and his mouth grew dry andleathery. He felt a desire to smoke, and had his case out and acigarette in his lips when it occurred to him that, when the Germansbroke through, the smell of the smoke would tell them instantly thatthey were in an occupied working. He counted on a certain amount ofdelay and doubt on their part when their picks first pierced his wall, and he counted on that pause again to give him time to escape. So heput the cigarette away, and immediately was overwhelmed with a cravingfor it. He fought it for five minutes that felt like five hours, andfelt his desire grow tenfold with each minute. It nearly drove him todoing what all the risk, all the discomfort of his cramped position, all the danger, had not done--to creep out and fire the mine withoutwaiting for that last instant when the picks would break through. Itcould make little difference, he argued to himself, in the movements ofthose above. What could five minutes more, or ten, or even fifteen, matter now? It might even be that he was endangering the success ofthe explosion by waiting, and it was perhaps wiser to crawl out at onceand fire the mine--and he could safely light a cigarette then as soonas he was round the corner of the T. So he argued the matter out, fingering his cigarette-case and longing for the taste of the tobacco, and yet knowing in his inmost heart that he would not move, despite hisarguments, until the first pick came through. He heard the strokesdraw nearer and nearer, and now he held his breath and strained hiseyes as each one was delivered. The instant he had waited for came inexactly the fashion he had expected--a thud, a thread of yellow lightpiercing the black dark, a grunt of surprise from the pick-wielder atthe lack of resistance to his stroke. All this was just what he hadexpected, had known would happen. The next stroke would show thedigger that he was entering some hole. Then there would be cautiousinvestigation, the sending back word to an officer, the slow andcareful enlargement of the opening. And before that moment came theSubaltern would be down his tunnel, and outside, and pressing theswitch . . . 

But his programme worked out no further than that first instant andthat first gleam of light. He saw the gleam widen suddenly as the pickwas withdrawn, heard another quick blow, saw the round spot of lightrun out in little cracks and one wide rift, and suddenly the wall fellin, and he was staring straight into the German gallery, with a darkfigure silhouetted clear down to the waist against the light of anelectric bulb-lamp which hung from the gallery roof. For an instantthe Subaltern's blood froze. The figure of the German was onlyseparated from him by a bare three yards, and to his dark-blinded eyesit seemed that he himself was standing in plain view in a brilliantblaze of light. Actually he was in almost complete darkness. Thesingle light in the German gallery hardly penetrated through the gloomof his own tunnel, and what little did showed nothing to the eyes ofthe German, used to the lamp-light and staring suddenly into the blackrift before him. But the German called out to some one behind him, twisted round, moved, stooping, back to the lamp and reached up a handto it. The Subaltern backed away hastily, his eyes fixed on the glowof light in the opening. The hole had broken through on a curve of histunnel, so that for fifteen or twenty feet back he could still see downthe German gallery, could watch the man unhook the lamp and carry itback to the opening, thrust the lamp before him and lean in over thecrumbling heap of earth his pick had brought down. The Subalternstopped and drew a gasping breath and held it. Discovery was a matterof seconds now. He had left his firing switch, but he still carriedthe portable telephone slung from his shoulder, the earth-pin danglingfrom it. He had only to thrust the pin into the mud and he wasconnected up with the Corporal at the outside switch, had only to shoutone word, 'Fire!'--and it would all be over. Quickly but noiselesslyhe put his hand down to catch up the wire with the earth-pin. His handtouched the revolver-butt in his holster, checked at it, closed roundit and slid it softly out. All this had taken an instant of time, andas he raised his weapon he saw the German still staring hard under theupheld lamp into the gloom. He was looking the other way, and theSubaltern levelled the heavy revolver and paused. The sights stood outclear and black against the figure standing in the glow of light--aperfect and unmissable target. The man was bareheaded, and wore amud-stained blue shirt with sleeves cut off above the elbow. TheSubaltern moved the notched sights from under the armpit of the raisedarm that held up the light, and steadied them on the round of the earthat stood out clear against the close-cropped black hair. He heard aguttural exclamation of wonder, saw the head come slowly round untilthe circle of the ear foreshortened and moved past his sights, and theywere centred straight between the staring eyes. His finger contractedon the trigger, but a sudden qualm stayed him. It wasn't fair, itwasn't sporting, it was too like shooting a sitting hare. And the manhadn't seen him even yet. Man? This was no man; a lad rather, ayouth, a mere boy, with childish wondering eyes, a smooth oval chin, the mouth of a pretty girl. The Subaltern had a school-boy brotherhardly younger than this boy; and a quick vision rose of a Germanmother and sisters--no, he couldn't shoot; it would be murder; it--andthen a quick start, an upward movement of the lamp, a sharp question, told him the boy had seen. The Subaltern spoke softly in fairly goodGerman. 'Run away, my boy. In an instant my mine will explode. '

'Who is it? Who is there?' gasped the boy. 

The Subaltern chuckled, and grinned wickedly. Swiftly he dropped therevolver, fumbled a moment, and pulled a coil of capped fuse from hispocket. 

'It is the English, ' he said. 'It is an English mine that I nowexplode, ' and, on the word, lit the fuse and flung it, fizzing andspitting a jet of sparks and smoke, towards the boy. The lad flinchedback and half turned to run, but the Subaltern saw him look round overhis shoulder and twist back, saw the eyes glaring at the fiery thing inthe mud, the dreadful resolve grow swiftly on the set young face, theteeth clamped on the resolve. He was going to dash for the fuse, totry to wrench it out and, as he supposed, prevent the mine exploding. The Subaltern jerked up the revolver again. This would never do; theprecious seconds were flying; at any moment another man might come. Hewould have saved this youngster if he could, but he could allow nothingto risk failure for his mine. 'Get back, ' he said sharply. 'Get backquickly, or I shall shoot. '

But now what he had feared happened. A voice called, a scufflingfootfall sounded in the German gallery, a dim figure pushed forwardinto the light beside the boy. The Subaltern saw that it was anofficer, heard his angry oath in answer to the boy's quick words, hisshout, 'The light, fool--break it'; saw the clenched fist's viciousbuffet in the boyish face and the quick grab at the electric bulb. TheSubaltern's revolver sights slid off the boy and hung an instant on thesnarling face of the officer. . . . 

In the confined space the roar of his heavy revolver rolled andthundered in reverberating echoes, the swirling powder-reek blinded himand stung in his nostrils; and as the smoke cleared he could see theboy scrambling back along his gallery and the officer sprawled facedown across the earth-heap in the light of the fallen lamp. 

The Subaltern smashed the lamp himself before he too turned andplunged, floundering and slipping and stumbling, for his exit in anagony of haste and apprehension. It was all right, he told himself adozen times; the officer was done for--the back of that head and a pastknowledge of a service revolver's work at close range told him thatplain enough; it would take a good many minutes for the boy to tell histale, and even then, if a party ventured back at once, it would takemany more minutes in the dark--and he was glad he thought to smash thelamp--before they could find his charges or the wires. It was safeenough, but--the tunnel had never seemed so long or the going so slow. He banged against beams and supports, ploughed through sticky mud andchurning water, rasped his knuckles, and bruised knees and elbows inhis mad haste. It was safe enough, but--but--but--suppose there was noresponse to his pressure on the switch; suppose there had been somesilly mistake in making the connections; suppose the battery wouldn'twork. There were a score of things to go wrong. Thank goodness he hadoverhauled and examined everything himself; although that again wouldonly make it more appallingly awful if things didn't work. No timenow, no chance to go back and put things right. Perhaps he ought tohave stayed back there and made the contact. A quick end if it workedright, and a last chance to refix it if it didn't; yes, he . . . Buthere was the light ahead. He shouted 'Fire!' at the top of his voice, still hurrying on and half cowering from the expected roar and shock ofthe explosion. Nothing happened. He shouted again and again as loudas his sobbing breath and labouring lungs would let him. Still--nothing; and it began to sear his brain as a dreadful certaintythat he had failed, that his mine was a ghastly frost, that all thelabour gone to its making and the good lives spent on it were wasted. He stumbled weakly out into the shaft, caught a glimpse of theCorporal's set face staring at the tunnel mouth, and tried once more tocall out 'Fire!' But the Corporal was waiting for no word. He hadalready got that, had heard the Subaltern's first shouts roll down thetunnel, in fact was waiting with a finger on the exploding switch forthe moment the Subaltern should appear. The finger moved steadily overas the Subaltern stumbled into sight--and the solid earth heavedconvulsively, shuddered, and rocked and shook to the roaring blast ofthe explosion. 

The shock and the rush of air from the tunnel-mouth caught theSubaltern, staggering to his knees, and flung him headlong. And as hepicked himself up again the air darkened with whizzing clods and mudand dust and stones and dirt that rained down from the sky. Before theechoes of the explosion had died away, before the last fragments anddebris had fallen, there came the sound of another roar, the bellowingthunder of the British guns throwing a storm of shell and shrapnelbetween the German supports and the ruined trench. That, and anothersound, told the Subaltern that the full fruits of his work were to befully reaped--the sound of the guns and of the full, deep-chested, roaring cheers of the British infantry as they swarmed from theirtrenches and rushed to occupy the crater of the explosion. 

 * * * * *

Later in the day, when the infantry had made good their possession ofthe place, had sandbagged and fortified it to stand against theexpected counter-attacks, the Subaltern went to look over the groundand see at first and close hand the results of his explosion. Technically, he found it interesting; humanly, it was merely sickening. The ground was one weltering chaos and confusion of tossed earth-heapsand holes, of broken beams and jagged-ended planks, of flung sandbagsand wrecked barricading. Of trench or barricade, as trench andbarricade, there remained, simply, no sign. The wreckage was scatteredthick with a dreadful debris of dead bodies, of bloody clothing, ofhelmets and broken rifles, burst packs and haversacks, bayonets, water-bottles, and shattered equipments. The Ambulance men were busy, but there were still many dead and dying and wounded to be removed, wounded with torn flesh and mangled limbs, dead and dying with scorchedand smouldering clothes. The infantry, hastily digging and fillingsandbags and throwing up parapets on the far edge of the reekingexplosion pit, had found many bodies caught in the descending avalancheof earth or buried in the collapsed trenches and dug-outs; and here andthere, amid the confusion, a foot or a hand protruding stark from someearth-heap marked the death-place of other victims. The whole scenewas one of death and desolation, of ruin and destruction, and theSubaltern turned from it sick at stomach. It was the first result of abig explosion he had seen. This was the sort of thing that he had readso often summed up in a line of the Official Despatch or a two-linenewspaper paragraph: 'A mine was successfully exploded under a sectionof the enemy's trench. ' A mine--_his_ mine. . . . 'God!' the Subalternsaid softly under his breath, and looked wonderingly about him. 

''E's a bloomin' little butcher, is that Lefftenant of ours, ' theCorporal said that night. ''Course it was a good bit o' work, an' he'dreason to be proud of it; but--well I thought I'd a strongish stomach, an' I've seen some dirty blood-an'-bones messes in my time but thatscorchin' shambles near turned me over. An' he comes back, afterlookin' at it, as cheerful as the cornerman o' a Christie Minstreltroupe, an' as pleased as a dog wi' two tails. Fair pleased, 'e was. '

But he was a little wrong. What had brought the Subaltern back withsuch a cheerful air was not the sight of his work, not the grim pictureof the smashed trenches. It was an encounter he had had with a littlegroup of German prisoners, the recognising amongst them of a dirty, mud-stained blue shirt with sleeves cut off above the elbows, aclose-cropped bare head, a boy's face with smooth oval chin and girlisheyes. The mine work he had directed, but others had shared it. It wasthe day's work--it was an incident of war--it was, after all, merely 'amine successfully exploded . . . ' But that one life saved was also hiswork, and, moreover, his own, his individual personal work. It was ofthat he thought most as he came back smiling to his Corporal. 

ARTILLERY SUPPORT

'_. . . Supported by a close and accurate artilleryfire . . . _'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

From his position in the 'Observation Post' the Artillery ForwardOfficer watched the fight raging along his front much as a spectator inthe grand-stand watches a football match. Through his glasses he couldsee every detail and movement of the fighters, see even their facialexpressions, the grip of hands about their weapons. Queerly enough, itwas something like looking at the dumb show of a cinema film. He couldsee a rifle pointed and the spit of flame from the muzzle withouthearing any report, could see an officer gesticulating and his mouthopening and closing in obvious stentorian shoutings without hearing thefaintest sound of his voice, could even see the quick flash and puffingsmoke of a grenade without catching the crash of its explosion. It wasnot that he was too far off to hear all these sounds, but simplybecause individually they were drowned in the continuous ear-fillingroar of the battle. 

The struggle was keenly interesting and desperately exciting, even froma spectator's point of view; and the interest and excitement were thegreater to the Forward Officer, because he was playing a part, and animportant part, in the great game spread before him. Beyond the lineof a section of the British front white smoke-puffs were constantlybursting, over his head a succession of shells streamed rushing andshrieking; and the place where each of those puffs burst depended onhim, each shell that roared overhead came in answer to his call. Hewas 'observing' for a six-gun battery concealed behind a gentle slopeover a mile away to his right rear, and, since the gunners at thebattery could see nothing of the fight, nothing of their target, noteven the burst of a single one of their shells, they depended solely ontheir Forward Officer to correct their aim and direct their fire. 

All along the front--or rather both the fronts, for the Germanbatteries worked on exactly the same system--the batteries were pouringdown their shells, and each battery was dependent for the accuracy ofits fire on its own Observing Officer crouching somewhere up in frontand overlooking his battery's 'zone. '

The fighting line surged forward or swayed back, checked and halted, moved again, now rapidly, now slowly and staggeringly, curved forwardhere and dinted in there, striving fiercely to hold its ground in thisplace, driving forward in that, or breaking, reeling back into the armsof the supports, swirling forward with them again. But no matterwhether the lines moved forward or back, fast or slow, raggedly andunevenly, or in one long close-locked line, ever and always the shellssoared over and burst beyond the line, just far enough barely to clearit if the fight were at close quarters; reaching out and on a hundred, two hundred, yards when the fighters drew apart for a moment; alwaysclear of their own infantry, and as exactly as possible on the fightingline of the enemy, for such is the essence of 'close and accurateartillery support. '

The Forward Observing Officer, perched precariously in an angle of thewalls of a ruined cottage, stared through his glasses at the confusionof the fight for hour after hour until his eyes ached and his visionswam. The Forward Officer had been there since daybreak, and becauseno shells obviously aimed at his station had bombarded him--plenty ofchance ones had come very close, but of course they didn't count--hewas satisfied that he was reasonably secure, and told his Major back atthe Battery so over his telephone. The succession of attack andcounter-attack had ceased for the time being, and the Forward Officerlet his glasses drop and shut his aching eyes for a moment. But, almost immediately, he had to open them and lift his head carefully, topeer out over the top of the broken wall; for the sudden crash ofreopening rifle fire warned him that another move was coming. From farout on his left, beyond the range of his vision, the fire began. Itbeat down, wave upon wave, towards his front, crossed it, and wentrolling on beyond his right. The initiative came from the Britishside, and, taking it as the prelude of an attack, developing perhapsout of sight on his left, the Forward Officer called up his Battery andquickened the rate of its fire upon the German line. In a few minuteshe caught a quick stir in the British line, a glimpse of the row ofkhaki figures clambering from their trench and the flickering flash oftheir bayonets--and in an instant the flat ground beyond the trench wascovered with running figures. They made a fair target that the Germangunners, rifles, and maxims were quick to leap upon. The German trenchstreamed fire, the German shells--shrapnel and high-explosive--blewgaping rents in the running line. The line staggered and flinched, halted, recovered, and went on again, leaving the ground behind itdotted with sprawling figures. The space covered by the ForwardOfficer's zone was flat and bare of cover clear to the German trenchtwo hundred yards away. It was too deadly a stretch for that gallantline to cover; and before it was half-way across, it faltered again, hung irresolute, and flung itself prone to ground. The level edge ofthe German trench suddenly became serrated with bobbing heads, flickered with moving figures, and the next moment was hidden by theswarm of men that leaped from it and came charging across the open. This line too withered and wilted under the fire that smote it, but itgathered itself and hurled on again. The Forward Officer called downthe shortening ranges to the guns, and the answering shrapnel fellfiercely on the German line and tore it to fragments--but the fragmentsstill advanced. The remnant of the British line rose and flung forwardto meet it, and as the two clashed the supports from either side pouredout to help. As the dense mass of Germans emerged, and knitted intoclose formation, the Forward Officer reeled off swift orders to thetelephone. The shrieking tempest of his shells fell upon the mass, struck and slew wholesale, struck and slew again. The mass shiveredand broke; but although part of it vanished back under the cover of thetrench, although another part lay piled in a wreckage of dead andwounded, a third part straggled forward and charged into the fight. The British line was overborne, and pushed struggling back until newsupports brought it fresh life and turned the tide again. The Germanssurviving the charge were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and theForward Officer, lifting his fire and pouring it on the German trench, checked for the moment any further rush of reinforcements. The Britishline ran forward to a field track running parallel to the trenches andnearly midway between them, flung itself down to escape the bulletsthat stormed across and began, as rapidly as the men's cramped positionwould allow, to dig themselves in. To their right and left the fieldtrack sank a foot or two below the surface of the field, and thisscanty but precious shelter had allowed the rest of the line to stophalf-way across and hold on to get its breath and allow a constantspray of supports to dash across the open and reinforce it. Now, thecentre, where the track ran bare and flat across the field, pliedfrantic shovels to heap up some sort of cover that would allow themalso to hang on in conformation of the whole line and gather breath andreinforcements for the next rush. 

The Germans saw plainly enough what was the plan, and took instantsteps to upset it. Their first and best chance was to thrust hard atthe weak and ill-protected centre, overwhelm it and then roll up thelines to right and left of it. 

A tornado of shell fire ushered in the new assault. The shells burstin running crashes up and down the advanced line, and up and down theBritish trench behind it; driving squalls of shrapnel swept the groundbetween the two, and, in addition, a storm of rifle and machine-gunbullets rained along the scanty parapet, whistled and droned and hissedacross the open. And then, suddenly, the assault was launched from allalong the German line. 

At the same instant a shell struck the wall of the Forward Officer'sstation, burst with a terrific crash, swept three parts of theremaining wall away in a cloud of shrieking splinters and swirling dustof brick and plaster, and threw the Forward Officer headlong half adozen yards. By some miracle he was untouched. His first thought wasfor the telephone--the connecting link with his guns. He scrambledover the debris to the dug-out or shelter-pit behind his corner andfound telephonist and telephone intact. He dropped on hands and kneesand crawled over the rubble and out beyond the end of the wall, for thecloud of smoke and plaster and brick-dust still hung heavily about theruin. Here, in the open as he was, the air sang like tenseharp-strings to the passage of innumerable bullets, the ground abouthis feet danced to their drumming, flicked and spat little spurts ofmud all over him. 

But the Forward Officer paid little heed to these things. For onemoment his gaze was riveted horror-stricken on the scene of the fight;the next he was on his feet, heedless of the singing bullets, heedlessof the roar and crash of another shell that hit the ground and flung acart-load of earth and mud whizzing and thumping about him, heedless ofeverything except the need to get quickly to the telephone. 

'Tell the Battery, Germans advancing--heavy attack on our front!' hepanted to the telephonist, jumped across to his corner, and heavedhimself up into place. The dust had cleared now, so that he could see. And what he could see made him catch his breath. An almost solid lineof Germans were clear of their trenches and pushing rapidly across theopen on the weak centre. And the Battery's shells were falling behindthe German line and still on their trenches. Swiftly the ForwardOfficer began to reel off his corrections of angles and range, and asthe telephonist passed them on gun after gun began to pitch its shellson the advancing line. 

The British rifles were busy too, and their fire rose in one continuousroar. But the fire was weakest from the thin centre line, the spotwhere the attack was heaviest. The guns were in full play again, andthe shells were blasting quick gaps out of the advancing line. But theline came on. The rifles beat upon it, and a machine-gun on the lessheavily pressed left turned and mowed the Germans down in swathes. Still the line came on stubbornly. It was broken and ragged now, andadvanced slowly, because the front ranks were constantly melting awayunder the British fire. The Forward Officer watched with strainingeyes glued to his glasses. A shell 'whooped' past close over his head, and burst just beyond him. He neither turned his head nor moved hisglasses. One, two, three, four burst short, and splinters and bulletssang past him; two more burst overhead, and the shrapnel clashed andrattled amongst the stone and brick of the ruins. Without moving, theForward Officer began to call a fresh string of orders. The rush ofhis shells ceased for a moment while the gunners adjusted the newangles and ranges. 'Number One fired. Two fired. Three, Four, Five, Six fired, sir, ' called the telephonist, and as he spoke there came theshrieks of the shells, and the white puffs of the bursts low down andbetween the prone British line and the advancing Germans. 

'Number Three, one-oh minutes more left!' shouted the Forward Officer. 'Number Five, add twenty-five--repeat. '

Again came the running bursts and puffing white smoke, and satisfiedthis time with their line, position, and distance, the Forward Officershouted for 'Gun-fire, ' jumped down and across to the telephonist'sshelter-pit. 

'I'm putting a belt of fire just ahead of our line, ' he shouted, curving his fingers about his lips and the mouthpiece in an attempt toshut out the uproar about them. 'If they can come through it we'redone--infantry can't hold 'em. Give me every round you can, and asfast as you can, please. ' He ran back to his place. A cataract ofshells poured their shrapnel down along a line of which the nearestedge was a bare twenty yards from the British front. The ForwardOfficer fixed his eyes on the string of white smoke-puffs with theircentre of winking flame that burst and burst and burst unceasingly. Ifone showed out of its proper place he shouted to the telephonist andnamed the delinquent gun, and asked for the lay and fuse-setting to bechecked. 

The advancing Germans reached at last the strip of ground where hisshrapnel hailed and lashed, reached the strip and pushed into it--butnot past it. Up to the shrapnel zone the advance could press; through, it could not. Under the shrapnel nothing could live. It swept theground in driving gust on gust, swept and besomed it bare of life. Here and there, in ones and twos and little knots and groups, theGermans strove desperately to push on. They came as far as that deadlyfire belt; and in ones and twos and little knots and groups they stayedthere and died. Supports hurried up and hurled themselves in, and aspasm of fresh strength and fury lifted the line and heaved it forward. So far the fire of its fury brought it; and there the hosing shrapnelmet it, swept down and washed it away, and beat it out to the lastspark and the last man. 

But from the German trenches another assault was forming, from theGerman batteries another squall of shell-fire smote the British line;and to his horror, the Forward Officer saw his own shells coming slowerand slower, the smoke-bursts growing irregular and slower again. Heleaped down and rushed to the telephone. 

Back in the Battery the telephone wires ran into a dug-out that was thebrain-centre of the guns, and from here the Forward Officer'sdirections emerged and were translated to the gunners through theBattery Commander and the Battery Sergeant-Major's megaphone. 

All the morning the gunners followed those orders blindly, sluing thehot gun-muzzles a fraction this way or that, making minute adjustmentson sights and range drums and shell fuses. They could see no glimpseof the fight, but, more or less accurately, they could follow itsvarying fortunes and trace its movements by the orders that camethrough to them. When they had to send their shells further back, theenemy obviously were being pressed back; when the fire had to bebrought closer the enemy were closer. An urgent call for rapid firewith an increasing range meant our infantry attacking; with a lesseningrange, their being attacked. 

Occasionally the Battery Commander passed to the Section Commandersitems of news from the Forward Officer, and they in turn told the'Numbers One' in charge of the guns, and the gun detachments. 

Such a message was passed along when the Forward Officer telephonednews of the heavy pressure on the weakened centre. Every man in theBattery knew what was expected, and detachment vied with detachment inthe speedy correcting of aim and range, and the rapid service of theirguns. When the order came for a round of 'Battery fire'--which callsfor the guns to fire in their turn from right to left--one gun was afew seconds late in reporting ready, and every other man at every othergun fretted and chafed impatiently as if each second had been an hour. 

At another message from the Forward Officer the Battery Commandercalled for Section Commanders. The Sergeant-Major clapped megaphone tomouth and shouted, and two young subalterns and a sergeant jumped fromtheir places, and raced for the dug-out. The Major spoke rapidly andtersely. 'We are putting down a belt of shrapnel in front of our owninfantry--very close to them. You know what that means--the mostcareful and exact laying and fusing, and fire as hot and heavy as youcan make it. The infantry can't hold 'em. They're depending on us;the line depends on us. Tell your men so. Be off, now. ' The threesaluted, whirled on their heels, and were off. They told their men, and the men strained every nerve to answer adequately to the call uponthem. The rate of fire worked up faster and faster. Between thethunder-claps of the gun the Sergeant-Major's megaphone bellowed, 'Number Six, check your lay. ' Number Six missed the message, but thenearest gun caught the word and passed it along. The Section Commanderheard, saluted to show he had heard and understood, and ran himself tocheck the layer's aim. 

Up to now the Battery had worked without coming under any serious fire. There were always plenty of rifle bullets coming over, and anoccasional one of the shells that roared constantly past or over fellamongst the guns. A few men had been wounded, and one had been killed, and that was all. 

Then, quite suddenly, a tempest of high-explosive shell rained down onthe battery, in front of, behind, over, and amongst the guns. Instinctively the men hesitated in their work, but the next instant thevoices of the Section Commanders brought them to themselves. Therewere shelter-pits and dug-outs close by, and, without urgent need oftheir fire, the guns might be left while the gunners took cover tillthe storm was over. But there could be no thought of that now, whilethe picture was in everyone's mind of the infantry out there being hardpressed and overborne by the weight of the assault. So the gunnersstayed by their guns and loaded, laid, and fired as fast as they couldserve their pieces. The gun shields give little or no protection fromhigh-explosive shells, because these burst overhead and fling theirfragments straight down, burst in rear, and hurl jagged splintersoutwards in every direction. The men were as open and unprotected tothem as bare flesh is to bullet or cold steel; but they knelt or sat intheir places, and pushed their work into a speed that was only limitedby the need for absolute accuracy. 

A shell burst close in rear of Number One gun, and the whirlwind ofsplinters and bullets struck down half the detachment at a blow. Thefallen men were lifted clear, the remaining gunners took up theirappointed share of the lost men's duties, a shell was slung in, thebreech slammed shut, the firing-lever jerked--and Number One gun was inaction again and firing almost as fast as before. The sergeant incharge of another gun was killed instantaneously by a shrapnel bulletin the head. His place was taken by the next senior before the lastconvulsive tremors had passed through the dead man's muscles; and thegun kept on without missing a round. 

The shell-fire grew more and more intense. The air was thick andchoking with smoke and chemical fumes, and vibrant with the rush andshriek, of the shells, the hum of bullets, and the ugly whirr ofsplinters, the crash of impacting shells, and ear-splitting crack ofthe guns' discharge, the 'r-r-rupp' of shrapnel on the wet ground, themetallic clang of bullets and steel fragments on the gun-shields andmountings. But through all the inferno the gunners worked on, swiftlybut methodically. After each shot the layers glared anxiously into theeye-piece of their sights and made minute movements of elevating andtraversing wheels, the men at the range-drums examined them carefullyand readjusted them exactly, the fuse-setters twisted the rings markingthe fuse's time of burning until they were correct literally to ahair-line; every man working as if the gun were shooting for aprize-competition cup. Their care, as well as their speed, was needed;for, more than any cup, good men's lives were at stake and hanging ontheir close and accurate shooting. For if the sights were a shade toright or left of their 'aiming point, ' if the range were shortened by afractional turn of the drum, if a fuse was wrongly set to one of thescores of tiny marks on its ring, that shell might fall on the Britishline, take toll of the lives of friend instead of foe, go to break downthe hard-pressed British resistance instead of upholding it. 

Man after man was hit by shell splinter or bullet, but no man left hisplace unless he was too badly injured to carry on. The seriouslywounded dragged themselves clear as best they could and crawled to anycover from the bursting shells; the dead lay where they fell. Thedetachments were reduced to skeleton crews. One Section Commander laidand fired a gun; another, with a smashed thigh, sat and set fuses untilhe fainted from loss of blood and from pain. The Battery Commandertook the telephone himself and sent the telephonist to help the guns;and when a bursting shell tore out one side of the sandbags of thedug-out the Battery Commander rescued himself and the instrument fromthe wreckage, mended the broken wire, and sat in the open, alternatelylistening at the receiver and yelling exhortation and advice to thegunners through the Sergeant-Major's megaphone. The Sergeant-Major hadgone on the run to round up every available man, and brought back atthe double the Battery cooks, officers' grooms, mess orderlies andservants. The slackening fire of the Battery spurted again and ran upto something like its own rate. And the Major cheered the men on to alast effort, shouting the Forward Officer's message that the attack wasfailing, was breaking, was being wiped out mainly by the Battery's fire. 

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tornado of shell-fire aboutthem ceased, shifted its storm-centre, and fell roaring and crashingand hammering on an empty hedge and ditch a full three hundred yardsaway. 

And at the same moment the Major shouted exultingly. 'They're done!'he bellowed down the megaphone; 'they're beat! The attack--and he fellback on the Forward Officer's own words--'the attack is blotted out. '

Whereat the panting gunners cheered faintly and short-windedly, andtook contentedly the following string of orders to lengthen the rangeand slacken the rate of fire. And the Battery made shift to move itsdead from amongst the gun and wagon wheels, to bandage and tie up itswounded with 'first field dressings, ' to shuffle and sort thedetachments and redistribute the remaining men in fair proportionamongst the remaining guns, to telephone the Brigade Headquarters toask for stretcher-bearers and ambulance, and more shells--doing it all, as it were, with one hand while the other kept the guns going, and theshells pounding down their appointed paths. 

For the doing of two or more things at once, and doing them rapidly, exactly, and efficiently, the while in addition highly unpleasantthings are being done to them, is all a part of the Gunners' game of'close and accurate artillery support. '

'NOTHING TO REPORT'

'_On the Western Front there is nothing to report. All remainsquiet. _'--OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

The 7th (Territorial) King's Own Asterisks had 'taken over' theirallotted portion of the trenches and were settling themselves in forthe night. When the two facts are taken in conjunction that it was anextremely unpleasant night, cold, wet and bleak, and the 7th werethoroughly happy and would not have exchanged places with any otherbattalion in Flanders, it will be very plain to those who know theirFront that the 7th K. O. A. Were exceedingly new to the game. They were:and actually this was their first spell of duty in the forward firingtrenches. 

They had been out for some weeks, weary weeks, filled with the diggingof communication trenches well behind the firing trenches, with drillsand with various 'fatigues' of what they considered a navvying ratherthan a military nature. But every task piled upon their reluctantshoulders had been performed promptly and efficiently, and now at lastthey were enjoying the reward of their zeal--a turn in the forwardtrenches. 

The men were unfeignedly pleased with themselves, with the BritishArmy, and with the whole world. The non-coms, were anxious anddesperately keen to see everything in apple-pie order. The Companyofficers were inclined to be fidgety, and the O. C. Was worried andconcerned to the verge of nerves. He pored over the trench maps thathad been handed to him, he imagined assaults delivered on this pointand that, hurried, at the point of the pencil, his supports alongvarious blue and red lines to the threatened angles of the wriggly linethat represented the forward trench, drew lines from his machine-gunemplacements to the red-inked crosses of the German wire entanglements, frowned and cogitated over the pencil crosses placed by the O. C. Of therelieved battalion where the lurking-places of German maxims weresuspected. Afterwards he made a long and exhaustive tour of the muddytrenches, concealing his anxiety from the junior officers, and speakinglightly and cheerfully to them--following therein truly andinstinctively the first principle of all good commanders to show thegreater confidence as they feel it the less. He returned to theBattalion Headquarters, situated in a very grimy cellar of ashell-wrecked house behind the support trenches, and partook of abelated dinner of tinned food flavoured with grit and plaster dust. 

The signallers were established with their telephones at the foot ofthe stone stair outside the cellar door, and into this cramped'exchange' ran the telephone wires from the companies in the trenchesand from the Brigade Headquarters a mile or two back. Every word thatthe signallers spoke was plainly heard in the cellar, and every timethe Colonel heard 'Hello! Yes, this is H. Q. , ' he sat motionlesswaiting to hear what message was coming through. When his meal wasfinished he resisted an impulse to 'phone' all the forward trenches, asking how things were, unlaced his boots, paused, and laced them upagain, lay down on a very gritty mattress in a corner of the cellar, and tried to sleep. For the first hour every rattle of rifle fire, every thud of a gun, every call on the telephone brought him up on hispillow, his ears straining to catch any further sound. After about thetenth alarm he reasoned the matter out with himself something afterthis fashion:--

'The battalion is occupying a position that has not been attacked forweeks, and it is disposed as other Regular battalions have been, and nomore and no less effectually than they. There isn't an officer or manin the forward trenches who cannot be fully trusted to keep a look-outand to resist an attack to the last breath. There is no need to worryor keep awake, and to do so is practically admitting a distrust of the7th K. O. A. I trust them fully, and therefore I ought to go to sleep. '

Whereupon the Colonel sat up, took off his wet boots, lay down again, resolutely closed his eyes--and remained wide awake for the rest of thenight. 

But if there be any who feel inclined to smile at the nervousness of anelderly, stoutish, and constitutionally easy-going Colonel ofTerritorials, I would remind them of a few facts. The Colonel hadimplicit faith in the stout-heartedness, the spirit, the fightingquality of his battalion. He had had the handling and the training ofthem ever since mobilisation, and he knew every single man of them aswell as they knew themselves. They had done everything asked of themand borne light-heartedly rough quarters, bad weather, hard duties. But--and one must admit it a big and serious 'but'--to-night might betheir real and their first testing in the flame and fire of War. 

Even as no man knows how he will feel and behave under fire, until hehas been under fire, so no regiment or battalion knows. The men wererazor-keen for action, but that very keenness might lead them into arashness, a foolhardiness, which would precipitate action. The Colonelbelieved they would stand and fight to the last gasp and die to thelast man rather than yield a yard of their trench. He believed that ofthem even as he believed it of himself--but he did not know it of themany more than he knew it of himself. Men, apparently every bit as goodas him, had before now developed some 'white streak, ' some folly, somestupidity, in the stress and strain of action. Other regiments, apparently as sound as his, had in the records of history failed orbroken in a crisis. He and his were new and untried, and militarycommanders for innumerable ages had doubted and mistrusted new anduntried troops. 

Well . . . He had done his best, and at least the next twenty-fourhours should show him how good or how bad that best had been. Butmeantime let no one blame him for his anxiety or nervousness. 

And meantime the 7th Asterisks, serenely unaware of their CommandingOfficer's worry and doubt--and to be fair to them and to him it must bestated that they would have flouted scornfully any suggestion that hehad held them--joyfully set about the impossible task of makingthemselves comfortable, and the congenial one of making the enemyextremely uncomfortable. The sentries were duly posted, and spent anentirely unnecessary proportion of their time peering over the parapet. 

There were more Verey pistol lights burnt during the night than wouldhave sufficed a trench-hardened battalion for a month, and the Germansopposite, having in hand a little job of adding to their barbed-wiredefences, were puzzled and rather annoyed by the unwonted display offireworks. They foolishly vented their annoyance by letting off a fewrounds of rapid fire at the opposition, and the 7th Asterisks eagerlyaccepted the challenge, manned their parapets and proceeded to pour aperfect hurricane of fire back to the challengers. The Germans, withthe exception of about a dozen picked sharp-shooting snipers, ceased tofire and took careful cover. 

The snipers, daring the Asterisks' three minutes of activity, succeededin scoring seven hits, and the Asterisks found themselves in possessionof a casualty list of one killed and six wounded before the Company andplatoon commanders had managed to stop the shooting and get the mendown under cover. 

When the shooting had ceased and the casualties had been cleared out ontheir way to the dressing station, the Asterisks recharged theirrifle-magazines and spent a good hour discussing the incident, thosemen who had been beside the casualties finding themselves and theirnarratives of how it happened in great demand. 

And one of the casualties, having insisted, when his slight wound wasdressed, on returning to the trench, had to deliver a series oflecturettes on what it felt like, what the Medical said, how the otherfellows were, how the dressing station was worked, and similarsubjects, with pantomimic illustrations of how he was holding his riflewhen the bullet came through the loophole, and how he was still fullycapable of continuing to hold it. 

A heavy shower dispersed the audiences, those of the men who were freeto do so returning to muddy and leaky dug-outs, and the remaindertaking up their positions at the parapet. There was as much chance ofthese latter standing on their heads as there was of their going tosleep, but the officers made so many visiting rounds to be certain oftheir sentries' wakefulness, and spent so long on each round and on thefascinating peeps over into 'the neutral ground, ' that the end of oneround was hardly completed before it was time to begin the next. 

Occasionally the Germans sent up a flare, and every man and officer ofthe K. O. A. Who was awake stared out through the loopholes inexpectation of they knew not what. They also fired off a good many'pistol lights, ' and it was nearly 4 A. M. Before the Germans venturedto send out their working-party over the parapet. Once over, theyfollowed the usual routine, throwing themselves flat in the mud andrank grass when a light flared up and remaining motionless until itdied out, springing to silent and nervous activity the instant darknessfell, working mostly by sense of touch, and keeping one eye always onthe British parapet for the first hint of a soaring light. 

The 'neutral ground' between the trenches was fairly thickly scatteredover with dead, the majority of them German, and it was easy enough foran extra score or so of men, lying prone and motionless as the deadthemselves, to be overlooked in the shifting light. The work wasproceeding satisfactorily and was almost completed when a mischance ledto the exposure of the party. 

One of the workers was in the very act of crawling over the parapetwhen a British light flared. Half-way over he hesitated one momentwhether to leap back or forward, then hurriedly leapt down in front ofthe parapet and flung himself flat on his face. He was just too late. The lights revealed him exactly as he leapt, and a wildly excitedKing's Own Asterisk pulled back the cut-off of his magazine and openedrapid fire, yelling frenziedly at the same time that they werecoming--were coming--were attacking--were charging--look out!

Every K. O. A. On his feet lost no time in joining in the 'mad minute'and every K. O. A. Who had been asleep or lying down was up in atwinkling and blazing over the parapet before his eyes were properlyopened. The machine-gun detachment were more circumspect if no lesseager. The screen before the wide loophole was jerked away and the fatbarrel of the maxim peered out and swung smoothly from side to side, looking for a fair mark. 

It had not long to wait. The German working-party 'stuck it out' for acouple of minutes, but with light after light flaming into the sky andexposing them pitilessly, with the British trench crackling andspitting fire from end to end, with the bullets hissing and whistlingover them, and hailing thick amongst them, their nerves gave and broke;in a frantic desire for life and safety they flung away the last chanceof life and safety their prone and motionless position gave them. 

They scrambled to their feet, a score of long-cloaked, crouchingfigures, glaringly plain and distinct in the vivid light, and turned torun for their trench. The sheeting bullets caught half a dozen anddropped them before they had well stood up, stumbled another two orthree over before they could stir a couple of paces, went on cuttingdown the remainder swiftly and mercilessly. The remainder ran, stumbling and tripping and staggering, their legs hampered by theirlong coats, their feet clogged and slipping in the wet, greasy mud. The eye glaring behind the swinging sights of the maxim caught thatclear target of running figures, the muzzle began to jet forth a streamof fire and hissing bullets, the cartridge belt to click, racingthrough the breach. 

The bullets cut a path of flying mud-splashes across the bare ground tothe runners, played a moment about their feet, then lifted and sweptacross and across--once, twice, thrice. On the first sweep thethudding bullets found their targets, on the second they still caughtsome of them, on the third they sang clear across and into the parapet, for no figures were left to check their flight. The working party waswiped out. 

It took the excited riflemen another minute or two to realise thatthere was nothing left to shoot at except an empty parapet and someheaps of huddled forms; but the pause to refill the empty magazinessteadied them, and then the fire died away. 

The whole thing was over so quickly that the rifle fire had practicallyceased before the Artillery behind had time to get to work, and by thetime they had flung a few shells to burst in thunder and lightning roarand flash over the German parapet, the storm of rifle fire hadslackened and passed. Hearing it die away, the gunners also stopped, reloaded, and laid their pieces, waited the reports of their ForwardOfficers, and on receiving them turned into their dug-outs and theirblankets again. 

But the batteries covering the front held by the Asterisks remained bytheir guns and continued to throw occasional rounds into the Germantrenches. Their Forward Officers had passed on the word received fromthe Asterisks of a sharp attack quickly beaten back--that being thenatural conclusion drawn from that leaping figure on the parapet andthe presence of Germans in the open--and the guns kept up a slow rateof fire more with the idea of showing the enemy that the defence wasawake and waiting for them than of breaking up another possible attack. The battalions of Regulars to either side of the Asterisks had morecorrectly diagnosed the situation as 'false alarm' or 'ten rounds rapidon working parties, ' and their supporting Artillery did no more thancarry on their usual night firing. 

The result of it all was that the Asterisks throughout the nightenjoyed the spectacle of some very pretty artillery fire in the dark onand over the trenches facing them, and also the much less pleasing oneof German shells bursting in the British trenches, and especially inthose of the K. O. A. They had the heaviest share on the simple andusual principle of retaliation, whereby if our Section A of trenches isshelled we shell the German section facing it, and _vice versa_. 

The fire was by no means heavy as artillery fire goes these days, andat first the Asterisks were not greatly disturbed by it. But even arate of three or four shells every ten or fifteen minutes is galling, and necessitates the keeping of close cover or the loss of a fairnumber of men. It took half a dozen casualties to impress firmly onthe Asterisks the need of keeping cover. Shell casualties have anextremely ugly look, and some of the Asterisks felt decidedly squeamishat sight of theirs--especially of one where the casualty had to becollected piece by piece, and removed in a sack. 

For an hour before dawn the battalion 'stood to, ' lining the trenchwith loaded rifles ready after the usual and accepted fashion, shivering despite their warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen capsand thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. Foran hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets andthe sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crashof shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the boom of the guns. 

That hour is perhaps always the worst of the twenty-four. The rousingfrom sleep, the turning out from warm or even from wet blankets, thestanding still in a water-logged trench, with everything--fingers andclothes and rifle and trench-sides--cold and wet and clammy to thetouch, and smeared with sticky mud and clay, all combine to make themorning 'stand to arms' an experience that no amount of repetition everaccustoms one to or makes more bearable. 

Even the Asterisks, fresh and keen and enthusiastic as they were, withall the interest that novelty gave to the proceedings, found the hourlong-drawn and trying; and it was with intense relief that they saw thefrequently consulted watches mark the finish of the time, and receivedthe word to break off from their vigil. 

They set about lighting fires and boiling water for tea, and frying ameagre bacon ration in their mess-tin lids, preparing and eating theirbreakfast. The meal over, they began on their ordinary routine work ofdaily trench life. 

Picked men were told off as snipers to worry and harass the enemy. They were posted at loopholes and in various positions that commanded agood outlook, and they fired carefully and deliberately at loopholes inthe enemy parapet, at doors and windows of more or less wreckedbuildings in rear of the German lines, at any and every head or handthat showed above the German parapet. In the intervals of firing theysearched through their glasses every foot of parapet, every yard ofground, every tree or bush, hayrick or broken building that looked alikely spot to make cover for a sniper on the other side. If their eyecaught the flash of a rifle, the instantly vanishing spurt of haze orhot air--too thin and filmy to be called smoke--that spot was markeddown, long and careful search made for the hidden sniper, and a sort ofBisley 'disappearing target' shoot commenced, until the opponent waseither hit or driven to abandon his position. 

The enemy's snipers were, of course, playing exactly the same game, andeither because they were more adept at it, or because the Asterisks'snipers were more reluctant to give up a position after it was'spotted' and hung on gamely, determined to fight it out, a slow butsteady tally was added to the Asterisks' casualty list. 

Along the firing and communication trenches parties set to work ofvarious sorts, bailing out water from the trench bottom, putting inbrushwood or brick foundations, building up and strengthening dug-outsand parapets, filling sandbags in readiness for night work and repairson any portion damaged by shell fire. 

By now they were learning to keep well below the parapet, not to lingerin portions of the communication trench that were enfiladed byshrapnel, to stoop low and pass quickly at exposed spots where thesnipers waited a chance to catch an unwary head. They had learned topress close and flat against the face of the trench or to get well downat the first hint of the warning rush of an approaching shell; theywere picking up neatly and quickly all the worst danger spots andangles and corners to be avoided except in time of urgent need. 

One thing more was needed to complete their education in the routine oftrench warfare, and the one thing came about noon just as the Asteriskswere beginning to feel pleasant anticipations of the dinner hour. Afaint and rather insignificant 'bang' sounded out in front. TheAsterisks never even noticed it, but next moment when something fellwith a thudding 'splosh' on the wet ground behind the trench the mennearest the spot lifted their heads and stared curiously. Anotherinstant and with a thunderous roar and a leaping cloud of thick smokethe bomb burst. The men ducked hastily, but one or two were not quickenough or lucky enough to escape, although at that short distance theywere certainly lucky in escaping with nothing worse than flesh woundsfrom the fragments of old iron, nails and metal splinters that whirledoutwards in a circle from the bursting bomb. Everyone heard the secondshot and many saw the bomb come over in a high curve. 

As it dropped it appeared to be coming straight down into the trenchand every man had an uncomfortable feeling that the thing was going tofall directly on him. Actually it fell short and well out in front ofthe trench and only a few splinters and a shower of earth whizzed overharmlessly high. 

The third was another 'over' and the fourth another 'short' and theAsterisks, unaware of the significance of the closing-in 'bracket'began to feel relief and a trifle of contempt for this clumsyslow-moving and visible missile. Their relief and contempt vanishedfor ever when the fifth bomb fell exactly in the trench, burst with anerve-shattering roar, and filled the air with whistling fragments anddense choking, blinding smoke and stench. 

Having got their range and angle accurately, the Germans proceeded tohurl bomb after bomb with the most horrible exactness and persistency. For two hundred yards up and down the trench there was no escape fromthe blast of the bursts. It was no good crouching low, or flatteningup against the parapet; for the bombs dropped straight down and struckout backwards and sideways and in every direction. 

Even the roofed-in dug-outs gave no security. A bomb that fell justoutside the entrance of one dug-out, riddled one man lying inside, andblew another who was crouching in the entrance outwards bodily acrossthe trench, stunning him with the shock and injuring him in a score ofplaces. Plenty of the bombs fell short of the trench, but too manyfell fairly in it. When one did so there was only one thing to do--tothrow oneself violently down in the mud of the trench bottom, and wait, heart in mouth, for the crash of the explosion. 

The Artillery, on being appealed to, pounded the front German trenchfor an hour, but made no impression on the trench-mortar. The O. C. Ofthe Asterisks telephoned the Brigade asking what he was to do to stopthe torment and destruction, and in reply was told he ought to bombback at the bomb-throwers. But the Asterisks had already tried thatwithout any success. The distance was too great for hand bombs toreach, and the men appeared to make poor shooting with the riflegrenades. 

'Why not try the trench-mortar?' asked the Brigade; to which theharassed Colonel replied conclusively because he didn't possess one, hadn't a bomb for one, and hadn't a man or officer who knew how to useone. 

The Brigade apparently learnt this with surprise, and replied vaguelythat steps would be taken, and that an officer and detachment of hisbattalion must receive a course of instruction. 

The Colonel replied with spirit that he was glad to hear all this, butin the meantime what was he to do to prevent his battalion being blownpiecemeal out of their trenches?

It all ended eventually in the arrival of a trench-mortar and a pile ofbombs from somewhere and a very youthful and very much annoyedArtillery subaltern from somewhere else. The Colonel was mostenormously relieved by these arrivals, but his high hopes were a gooddeal dashed by the artilleryman. 

That youth explained that he was in effect totally ignorant oftrench-mortars and their ways, that he had been shown the thing a weekago, had it explained to him--so far as such a rotten toy could beexplained--and had fired two shots from it. However, he said briskly, if off-handedly, he was ready to have a go with it and see what hecould do. 

The trench-mortar was carried down to the forward trench, and on theway down behind it the youngster discoursed to the O. C. Of theAsterisks on the 'awful rot' of a gunner officer being chased off on toa job like this--any knowledge of gunnery being entirely superfluousand, indeed, wasted on such a kid's toy. And the O. C. , looking at thetrench-mortar being prepared, made a mental remark about 'the mouths ofbabes' and the wise words thereof. 

The weapon is easily described. It was a mere cylinder of cast iron, closed at one end, open at the other, and with a roomy 'touch-hole' atthe closed end. The carriage consisted of two uprights on a base, withmortar between them and pointing up at an angle of about forty-fivedegrees. 

The charge was little packets of gunpowder tied up in paper in measureddoses. The bomb was a tin-can--an empty jam-tin, mostly--filled with abursting charge and fragments of metal, and with an inch or so of thefuse protruding. 

The piece was loaded by throwing a few packets of powder into themuzzle, poking them with a piece of stick to burst the paper, andcarefully sliding the bomb down on top of the charge. A length of fusewas poked into the touch-hole and the end lit, sufficient length beinggiven to allow the lighter to get round the nearest corner before themortar fired. 

The whole thing was too rubbishy and cheaply and roughly made to havebeen fit for use as a 'kid's toy, ' as the subaltern called it. Toimagine it being used as a weapon of precision in a war distinguishedabove all others as one of scientifically perfect weapons andimplements was ridiculous beyond words. 

The Colonel watched the business of loading and laying with amazementand consternation. 

'Is it possible to--er--hit anything with that?' he asked. 

'Well, more or less, ' said the youthful subaltern doubtfully. 'There'sa certain amount of luck about it, I believe. '

'But why on earth, ' said the Colonel, beginning to wax indignant, 'dothey send such a museum relic here to fight a reasonably accurate anddecidedly destructive mortar?'

The subaltern chuckled. 

'That's not any museum antique, ' he said. 'That's a Mortar, Trench, Mark Something or other--the latest, the most modern weapon of the kindin the British Army. It was made, I believe, in the Royal Arsenal, andit is still being made and issued for use in the field--the Engineerscollecting the empty jam-pots and converting them to bombs. They'veonly had four or five months, y'see, to evolve a---- look out, sir!Here's one of theirs!'

The resulting explosion flung a good deal of mud over the parapet on tothe Colonel and the subaltern, and raised the youth to wrath. 

'Beasts!' he said angrily, and poked a length of fuse in thetouch-hole. 'Get away round the traverse!' he ordered the mob nearhim. 'And you'd better go, too, sir--as I will when I've touched heroff. Y'see, she's just as liable to explode as not, and, if she does, she'd make more mess in this trench than I can ever hope she will in aGerman one. '

The Colonel retired round the nearest traverse, and next moment thelieutenant plunged round after him just as the mortar went off with aresounding bang. Every man in the trench watched the bomb rise, twirling and twisting, and fall again, turning end over end towards theGerman trench. 

At about the moment he judged it should burst, the lieutenant poked hishead up over the parapet, but bobbed down hurriedly as a couple ofbullets sang past his ear. 

'Pretty nippy lot across there!' he said. 'I must find a loophole toobserve from. And p'r'aps you'd tell some of your people to keep up abrisk fire on that parapet to stop 'em aiming too easy at me. Nowwe'll try another. '

At the next bang from the opposite trench he risked another quick peepover and this time ducked down with an exclamation of delight. 

'I've spotted him. ' he said. 'Just caught the haze of his smoke. Downthe trench about fifty yards. So we'll try trail-left a piece--orwould if this old drain-pipe had a trail. '

He relaid his mortar carefully, and fired again. Having no sights orarrangement whatever for laying beyond a general look over the line ofits barrel and a pinch more or less of powder in the charge, it canonly be called a piece of astounding good luck that the jam-pot bombfell almost fairly on the top of the German mortar. There was a mostsatisfying uproar and eddying volume of smoke and eruption of earth, and the lieutenant stared through a loophole dumb-founded with delight. 

'I'll swear, ' he said, 'that our old Plum-and-Apple pot never made aburst that big. I do believe it must have flopped down on the otherfellow and blown up one or two of his bombs same time. I say, isn'tthat the most gorgeous good luck? Well, good enough to go on with. We'll have a chance for some peaceful practice now?'

Apparently, since the other mortar ceased to fire, it must have beenput out of action, and the lieutenant spent a useful hour pot-shottingat the other trench. 

The shooting was, to say the least, erratic. With apparently the samecharge and the same tilt on the mortar, one bomb would drop yards shortand another yards over. If one in three went within three yards of thetrench, if one in six fell in the trench, it was, according to thelieutenant, a high average, and as much as any man had a right toexpect. But at the end of the hour, the Asterisks, who had been hugelyenjoying the performance, and particularly the cessation of Germanbombs, were horrified to hear a double report from the German trench, and to see two dark blobs fall twinkling from the sky. 

The following hour was a nightmare. Their trench-mortar was completelyout-shot. Those fiendish bombs rained down one after the other alongthe trench, burst in devastating circles of flame and smoke andwhirling metal here, there, and everywhere. 

The lieutenant replied gallantly. A dozen times he had to shiftposition, because he was obviously located, and was being deliberatelybombarded. 

But at last the gunner officer had to retire from the contest. Hismortar showed distinct signs of going to pieces--the muzzle-end havingbegun to split and crack, and the breech-end swelling in adangerous-looking bulge. 

'Look at her, ' said the lieutenant disgustedly. 'Look at her openingout an' unfolding herself like a split-lipped ox-eyed daisy. Anyhow, this is my last bomb, so the performance must close down till we getsome more jam-pots loaded up. '

The enemy mortars were evidently of better make, for they continued tobombard the suffering Asterisks for another full hour. They did a fairamount of damage to the trench and parapet, and the Germans seized theopportunity of the Asterisks' attempted repairs to put in some maximpractice and a few rounds of shrapnel. 

Altogether, the 7th King's Own Asterisks had a lively twenty-four hoursof it, and their casualties were heavy, far beyond the average of anordinary day's trench work. Forty-seven they totalled in all--ninekilled and thirty-six wounded. 

They were relieved that night, this short spell being designed as asort of introduction or breaking in or blooding to the game. 

Taking it all round, the Asterisks were fully pleased with themselves. Their Colonel had complimented them on their behaviour, and they spentthe next few days back in the reserve, speculating on what the paperswould say about them. The optimists were positive they would have afull column at least. 

'We beat on an attack, ' they said. 'There's sure to be a bit in aboutthat. And look at the way we were shelled, and our Artillery shelledback. There was a pretty fair imitation of a first-class battle for abit, and most likely there would have been one if we hadn't scupperedthat attack. And don't forget the bombing we stuck out--and thecasualties. Doesn't every one tell us they were extra heavy? And Ibelieve we are about the first Terrier lot to be in a heavy "do" in theforward trenches. You see--it'll be a column at least, and may be two. '

The pessimists declared that two or three paragraphs were all theycould expect, on account of the silly fashion of not publishing detailsof engagements. 'And whatever mention we do get, ' they said, 'won'tsay a word about the K. O. A. It'll just be a "battalion, " or maybe "aTerritorial battalion, " and no more. '

'Anyway, ' said the optimists, 'we'll be able to write home to ourpeople and our pals, and tell them it was us, though the despatchesdon't mention us by name. '

But optimists and pessimists alike grabbed the papers that came to handeach day, and searched eagerly for the Eye-witness' reports, or theofficial despatch or communiqué. At last there reached them the paperwith the communiqué dated the day after their day in the trenches. They stared at it, and then hurried over the other pages, turned back, and examined them carefully one by one. There were columns and columnsabout a strike and other purely domestic matters at home, but not aword about the 7th Kings Own Asterisks (Territorial), not a word abouttheir nine dead and thirty-six wounded--not a word; and, more thanthat, barely a word about the Army, or the Front, or the War. 

'There might be no bloomin' war at all to look at this paper, ' said onein disgust. 'There's plenty about speeding-up the factories (an' it'sabout time they speeded up some one to make something better'n thatdrain-pipe or jam-pot bomb we saw), plenty about those loafin' swine athome, but not a bloomin' word about us 'ere. It makes me fair sick. '

'P'raps there wasn't time to get it in, ' suggested one of the mostpersistent optimists. 'P'raps they'll have it in to-morrow. '

'P'raps, ' said the disgusted one contemptuously, 'an' p'raps not. Lookat the date of that despatch. Isn't that for the day we was in thethick of it? An' look what it says. Don't that make you sick?'

And in truth it did make them 'sick. ' For their night and day offighting--their defeat of an attack, their suffering under shell, bullet, and bomb, their nine killed and their thirty-six wounded--wereall ignored and passed by. 

The despatch for that day said simply: 'On the Western Front there isnothing to report. All remains quiet. '

THE PROMISE OF SPRING

'_Only when the fields and roads are sufficiently dry will thefavourable moment have come for an advance. _'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIALDESPATCH. 

It is Sunday, and the regiment marching out towards the firing line andits turn of duty in the trenches meets on the road every now and then apeasant woman on her way to church. Some of the women are young andpretty, some old and wrinkled and worn; they walk alone or in couplesor threes, but all alike are dressed in black, and all alike trampslowly, dully, without spring to their step. Over them the sun shinesin a blue sky, round them the birds sing and the trees and fieldsspread green and fresh; the flush of healthy spring is on thecountryside, the promise of warm, full-blooded summer pulses in theair. But there is no hint of spring or summer in the sad-eyed faces orthe listless, slow movements of the women. It is a full dozen miles tothe firing line, and to eye or ear, unless one knows where and how tolook and listen, there is no sign of anything but peace and pleasantlife in the surroundings. But these black-clad women do know--knowthat the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides aroofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that forall their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longervisible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick andstone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of scarletyonder in the field is the rough wooden cross with a _képi_ on topmarking the grave of a soldier of France; that down in the hollow justout of sight are over a score of those cap-crowned crosses; that abroad belt of those graves runs unbroken across this sunlit face ofFrance. They know, too, that those dull booms that travel faintly tothe ear are telling plain of more graves and of more women that willwear black. It is little wonder that there are few smiles to be seenon the faces of these women by the wayside. They have seen and heardthe red wrath of war, not in the pictures of the illustrated papers, not in the cinema shows, not even by the word-of-mouth tales of chancemen who have been in it; but at first-hand, with their own eyes andears, in the leaping flames of burning homes, in the puffing whiteclouds of the shrapnel, the black spouting smoke of the high-explosive, in the deafening thunder of the guns, the yelling shells, the crash offalling walls, the groans of wounded men, the screams of frightenedchildren. Some of them may have seen the shattered hulks of men bornepast on the sagging stretchers; all of them have seen the ladenambulance wagons and motors crawling slowly back to the hospitals. 

And of these women you do not say, as you would of our women at home, that they may perhaps have friend or relation, a son, a brother, ahusband, a lover, at the front. You say with certainty they have oneor other of these, and may have all, that every man they know, of anage between, say, eighteen and forty, is serving his country in thefield or in the workshops--and mostly in the field--if so be they arestill alive to serve. 

The men in the marching khaki regiment know all these things, and thereare respect and sympathy in the glances and the greetings that passfrom them to the women. 'They're good plucked 'uns, ' they tell eachother, and wonder how our women at home would shape at this game, andwhether they would go on living in a house that was next door to oneblown to pieces by a shell yesterday, and keep on working in fieldswhere hardly a day passed without a shell screaming overhead, whetherthey'd still go about their work as best they could for six days a weekand then to church on Sunday. 

Two women, one young and lissom, the other bent and frail and clingingwith her old arm to the erect figure beside her, stand aside close tothe ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 'Cheer up, mother, ' one mancalls. 'We're goin' to shift the Boshies out for you, ' and 'Bongjewer, ' says another, waving his hand. Another pulls a sprig of lilacfrom his cap and thrusts it out as he passes. 'Souvenir!' he says, lightly, and the young woman catches the blossom and draws herself upwith her eyes sparkling and calls, 'Bonne chance, Messieurs. Goo-o-o-dlock. ' She repeats the words over and over while the regiment passes, and the men answer, 'Bong chawnse' and 'Good luck, ' and such scraps ofFrench as they know--or think they know. The women stand in thesunshine and watch them long after they have passed, and then turnslowly and move on to their church and their prayers. 

The regiment tramps on. It moves with the assured stamp and swing ofmen who know themselves and know their game, and have confidence intheir strength and fitness. Their clothes are faded andweather-stained, their belts and straps and equipments chafed and worn, the woodwork of their rifles smooth of butt and shiny of hand-grip frommuch using and cleaning. Their faces bronzed and weather-beaten, andwith a dew of perspiration just damping their foreheads--where men lessfit would be streaming sweat--are full-cheeked and glowing with health, and cheek and chin razored clean and smooth as a guardsman's going onchurch parade. The whole regiment looks fresh and well set-up andclean-cut, satisfied with the day and not bothering about the morrow, magnificently strong and healthy, carelessly content and happy, notanxious to go out of its way to find a fight, but impossible to moveaside from its way by the fight that does find it--all of which is tosay it looks exactly what it is, a British regiment of the regularLine, war-hardened by eight or nine months' fighting, moving up from afour days' rest back into the firing line. 

It is fairly early in the day, and the sun, although it is brightenough to bring out the full colour of the green grass and trees, theyellow laburnum, and the purple lilac, is not hot enough to makemarching uncomfortable. The road, a main route between two towns, ispaved with flat cobbles about the size of large bricks, and borderedmile after mile with tall poplars. There are farms and hamlets andvillages strung close along the road, and round and about all thesehouses are women and children, and many men in khaki, a few dogs, somepigs perhaps, and near the farms plenty of poultry. By most of thefarms, too, are orchards and fruit-trees in blossom; and in some ofthese lines of horses are ranked or wagons are parked, sheltered by thetrees from aerial observation. For all this, it must be remembered, isfar enough back from the firing line to be beyond the reach of any butthe longest-range guns--guns so big that they are not likely to wastesome tons of shells on the off-chance of hitting an encampment anddisabling few or many horses or wagons. 

Towards noon the regiment swings off the road and halts in a largeorchard; rifles are stood aside, equipments and packs are thrown off, tunics unbuttoned and flung open or off, and the men drop with puffingsighs of satisfaction on the springy turf under the shade of thefruit-trees. The 'travelling cookers' rumble up and huge cauldrons ofstew and potatoes are slung off, carried to the different companies, and served steaming hot to the hungry men. A boon among boons thesesame cookers, less so perhaps now that the warmer weather is here, buta blessing beyond price in the bitter cold and constant wet of the pastwinter, when a hot meal served without waiting kept heart in many menand even life itself in some. Their fires were lit before the regimentbroke camp this morning, and the dinners have been jolting over thelong miles since sun-up, cooking as comfortably and well as they wouldin the best-appointed camp or barrack cook-house. 

The men eat mightily, then light their pipes and cigarettes and loll attheir ease. The trees are masses of clustering pink and white blossom, the grass is carpeted thick with the white of fallen petals andsplashed with sunlight and shade. A few slow-moving clouds driftlazily across the blue sky, the big, fat bees drone their sleepy songamongst the blossoms, the birds rustle and twitter amongst the leavesand flit from bough to bough. It would be hard to find a more peacefulpicture in any country steeped in the most profound peace. There isnot one jarring note--until the 'honk, honk' of a motor is followed bythe breathless, panting whirr of the engine, and a big car flashes downthe road and past, travelling at the topmost of its top speed. Thereis just time to glimpse the khaki hood and the thick scarlet crossblazing on a white circle, and the car is gone. Empty as it is, it ismoving fast, and with luck and a clear road it will be well inside thedanger zone at the back door of the trenches in less than twentyminutes. In half an hour perhaps it will have picked up its full load, and be sliding back smoothly and gently down the cobbled road, swingingcarefully now to this side to avoid some scattered bricks, now to thatto dodge a shell-hole patched with gravel, driven down as tenderly andgently as it was driven up fiercely and recklessly. 

Presently there are a few quiet orders, a few minutes' stir andmovement, a shifting to and fro of khaki against the green and pink andwhite . . . And the companies have fallen in and stand in straightrulered ranks. A pause, a sharp order or two, and the quick staccatoof 'numbering off' ripples swiftly down the lines; another pause, another order, the long ranks blur and melt, harden and halt instantlyin a new shape; and evenly and steadily the ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars. There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing hasmoved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of aproperly adjusted, well-oiled machine--which, after all, is just whatthe regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, butit eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortestof halts from dawn to dusk. 

As the miles unwind behind the regiment the character of the countrybegins to change. There are fewer women and children to be seen now;there are more roofless buildings, more house-fronts gaping doorlessand windowless, more walls with ragged rents, and tumbled heaps ofbrick lying under the yawning black holes. But the grass is stillgreen, and the trees thick with foliage, the fields neatly ploughed andtilled and cultivated, with here and there a staring notice planted onthe edge of a field, where the long, straight drills are sprinkled withbudding green--'Crops sown. Do not walk here. ' Altogether there islittle sign of the heavy hand of war upon the country, and such signsas there are remain unobtrusive and wrapped up in springing verdure andbloom and blossom. Even the trapping of war, the fighting machineitself, wears a holiday or--at most--an Easter-peace-manoeuvreappearance. A heavy battery has its guns so carefully concealed, sobowered in green, that it is only the presence of the lounging gunnersand close, searching looks that reveal a few inches of muzzle peeringout towards the hill crest in front. Scattered about behind the guns, covered with beautiful green turf, shadowed by growing trees, are thedwelling-places of the gunners, deep 'dug-outs, ' with no visible signof their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. Outin the open a man sits with a pair of field-glasses, sweeping the sky. He is the aeroplane look-out, and at the first sign of a distant speckin the sky or the drone of an engine he blows shrilly on his whistle;every man dives to earth or under cover, and remains motionless untilthe whistle signals all clear again. An enemy aeroplane might drop towithin pistol shot and search for an hour without finding a sign of thebattery. 

When the regiment swerves off the main road and moves down a windingside-track over open fields, past tree-encircled farms, and along bythick-leaved hedges, it passes more of these Jack-in-the-Greenconcealed batteries. All wear the same look of happy and indolentease. Near one is a stream, and the gunners are bathing in anartificially made pool, plunging and splashing in showers of glisteningdrops. They are like school boys at a picnic. It seems utterlyridiculous to think that they are grim fighting men whose business inlife for months past and for months to come is to kill and kill, and tobe killed themselves if such is the fortune of war. Another battery offield artillery passes on the road. But even here, shorn of theirconcealing greenery, in all the bare working-and-ready-for-businessapparel of 'marching order, ' there is little to suggest real war. Drivers and gunners are spruce and neat and clean, the horses are sleekand well fed and groomed till their skins shine like satin in the sun, the harness is polished and speckless, bits and stirrup-irons andchains and all the scraps of steel and brass twinkle and wink in brightand shining splendour. The ropes of the traces--the last touch ofpride in perfection this, surely--are scrubbed and whitened. The wholebattery is as spick and span, as complete and immaculate, as if it werewaiting to walk into the arena at the Naval and Military Tournament. Such scrupulous perfection on active service sounds perhaps unnecessaryor even extravagant. But the teams, remember, have been for weeks pastluxuriating in comfortable ease miles back in their 'wagon-line'billets, where the horses have done nothing for days on end but feedand grow fat, and the drivers nothing but clean up and look after theirteams and harness. If the guns up in the firing line had to shiftposition it has meant no more to the teams than a break of the monotonyfor a day or two, a night or two's marching, and a return to the rear. 

It is afternoon now, and the regiment is drawing near to the trenches. The slanting sun begins to throw long shadows from the poplars. Theopen fields are covered with tall grass and hay that moves in long, slow, undulating waves under the gentle breeze that is rising. Thesloping light falling on them gives the waves an extraordinaryresemblance to the lazy swell on a summer sea. Here and there thefields are splashed with broad bands of vivid colour--the blazingscarlet of poppies, the glowing cloth-of-gold of yellow mustard, therich, deep, splendid blue of corn-flowers. 

For one or two miles past the track has been plainly marked bysign-posts bearing directions to the various trenches and theirentrances. Now, at a parting of the main track, a group of'guides'--men from the regiment being relieved from the trenches--waitthe incoming regiment. Company by company, platoon by platoon, theregiment moves off to the appointed places, and by company and platoonthe outcoming regiment gathers up its belongings and moves out. Inmost parts of the firing line these changes would only be made afterdark. But this section bears the reputation of being a 'peaceful' one, the Germans opposite of being 'tame, ' so the reliefs are made indaytime, more or less in safety. There has been no serious fightinghere for months. Constant sniping and bickering between the forwardfiring trenches has, of course, always gone on, but there has been noattack one way or the other, little shell-fire, and few aeroplanes over. 

The companies that 'take over' the support trenches get variedinstructions and advice about tending the plants and flowers round thedugouts, and watering the mustard-and-cress box. They absorb theadvice, strip their accoutrements and tunics, roll up theirshirt-sleeves, and open the throats, fish out soap and towels fromtheir packs, and proceed to the pump to lather and wash copiously. Thecompanies for the forward trench march down interminable communicationtrenches, distribute themselves along the parapet, and also absorbadvice from the outgoing tenants--advice of the positions of enemysnipers, the hours when activity and when peace may be expected, thespecially 'unhealthy' spots where a sniper's bullet or a bomb must bewatched for, the angles and loopholes that give the best look-out. Thetrenches are deep and well-made, the parapets solidly constructed. Forfour days or six, or as many as the regiment remains 'in, ' the range ofthe men's vision will be the walls of the trench, the piled sandbags, the inside of their dug-outs, and a view (taken in peeps through aloophole or reflected in a periscope mirror) of about fifty to ahundred yards of 'neutral ground' and the German parapet beyond. Theneutral ground is covered with a jungle of coarse grass, edged on bothsides with a tangle of barbed wire. 

Close to the German parapet are a few black, huddled heaps--deadGermans, shot down while out in a working party on the wire at night, and left there to rot, and some killed in their own trench, and tumbledout over the parapet by their own comrades. The drowsy silence isbroken at long intervals by a rifle shot; a lark pours out a stream ofjoyful thrilling song. 

 * * * * *

A mile or two back from the firing line a couple of big motor-carsswing over the crest of a gentle rise, swoop down into the dip, andhalt suddenly. A little group of men with scarlet staff-bands on theircaps and tabs on their collars climb out of the cars and move off thetrack into the grass of the hollow. They prod sticks at the ground, stamp on it, dig a heel in, to test its hardness and dryness. 

The General looks round. 'This is about as low-lying a spot as we haveon this part of front, ' he says to his Chief of Staff. 'If it is dryenough here it must be dry enough everywhere else. '

The Chief assents, and for a space the group stands looking round thesunlit fields and up at the clear sky. But their thoughts are not ofthe beauties of the peaceful landscape. The words of the General arethe key to all their thoughts. For them the promise of spring is agrim and a sinister thing; to them the springy green turf carpet on thefields means ground fit to bear the weight of teams and guns, dryenough to give firm foothold to the ranks of infantry charging acrossthe death-trap of the neutral ground, where clogging, wet, slippery mudadds to the minutes under the hail of fire and every minute there inthe open means hundreds of lives lost. The hard, dry road underfootmeans merely that roads are passable for heavy guns and transport. Thethick green foliage of the trees is so much cover for guns and themoving of troops and transport under concealment from air observation;the clear, blue sky promises the continuance of fine weather, the finalrelease from the inactivity of the trenches. To these men the 'Promiseof Spring' is the promise of the crescendo of battle and slaughter. 

The General and his Staff are standing in the middle of a wide patch ofpoppies, spread out in a bright scarlet that matches exactly the redsplashes on the brows and throats of the group. They move slowly backtowards the cars, and as they walk the red ripples and swirls againsttheir boots and about their knees. 

One might imagine them wading knee-deep in a river of blood. 

THE ADVANCE

'_The attack has resulted in our line being advanced from one to twohundred yards along a front of over one thousand yards. _'--OFFICIALDESPATCH. 

Down to the rawest hand in the latest-joined drafts, everyone knew fora week before the attack commenced that 'something was on, ' and fortwenty-four hours before that the 'something' was a move of someimportance, no mere affair of a battalion or two, or even of brigades, but of divisions and corps and armies. There had been vague stirringsin the regiments far behind the firing line 'in rest, ' refittings andcompletings of kits, reissuing of worn equipments, and a most ominousanxiety that each man was duly equipped with an 'identity disc, ' thetell-tale little badge that hangs always round the neck of a man onactive service and that bears the word of who he is when he is broughtin wounded--who he was when brought in dead. The old hands judged allthe signs correctly and summed them up in a sentence, 'Being fattenedfor the slaughter, ' and were in no degree surprised when the suddenorder came to move. Those farthest back moved up the first stages bydaylight, but when they came within reach of the rumbling guns theywere halted and bivouacked to wait for night to cloak their movementsfrom the prying eyes of the enemy 'planes. The enemy mighthave--probably had--an inkling of the coming attack; but they might notknow exactly the portion of front selected for the heaviest pressure, and this must be kept secret till the last possible moment. So thefinal filing up into the forward and support trenches was done bynight, and was so complete by daylight that no sign of unwontedmovement could be discerned from the enemy trenches and observingstations when day broke. 

It was a beautiful morning--soft and mildly warm and sunny, with just aslight haze hanging low to tone the growing light, and, incidentally, to delay the opening of fire from the guns. Anyone standing midwaybetween the forward firing trenches might have looked in vain forliving sign of the massed hordes waiting the word to be at each other'sthroats. Looking forward from behind the British lines, it could beseen that the trenches and parapets were packed with men; but no manshowed head over parapet, and, seen from the enemy's side, the parapetspresented blank, lifeless walls, the trenches gave no glimpse of life. All the bustle and movement of the night before was finished. Atmidnight every road and track leading to the forward trenches had beenbrimming with men, with regiments tramping slowly or squatting stolidlyby the roadside, smoking much and talking little, had been crawlingwith transport, with ammunition carts, and ambulances andstretcher-parties, and sappers heavily laden with sandbags and rolls ofbarbed wire. The trenches--support, communication, and firing--hadtrickled with creeping rivulets of khaki caps and been a-bristle withbobbing rifle-barrels. Further back amongst the lines of guns the lastloads of ammunition were rumbling up to the batteries, the last shellsrequired to 'complete establishment'--and over-complete it--were beingstowed in safe proximity to the guns. At midnight there were scores ofthousands of men and animals busily at work with preparations for theslaughter-pen of the morrow. Before midnight came again the bustlewould be renewed, and the circling ripples of activity would bespreading and widening from the central splash of the battle front tillthe last waves washed back to Berlin and London, brimming the hospitalsand swirling through the munition factories. But now at daybreak thebattle-field was steeped in brooding calm. Across the open space ofthe neutral ground a few trench periscopes peered anxiously for anysign of movement, and saw none; the batteries' 'forward observingofficers, ' tucked away in carefully chosen and hidden look-outs, fidgeted with wrist-watches and field-glasses, and passed back bytelephone continual messages about the strength of the growing lightand the lifting haze. An aeroplane droned high overhead, and an'Archibald' (anti-aircraft gun) or two began to pattern the sky aboutit with a trail of fleecy white smoke-puffs. The 'plane sailed on andout of sight, the smoke-puffs and the wheezy barks of 'Archibald'receding after it. Another period of silence followed. It was brokenby a faint report like the sound of a far-off door being slammed, andalmost at the same instant there came to the ear the faint thin whistleof an approaching shell. The whistle rose to a rush and a roar thatcut off abruptly in a thunderous bang. The shell pitched harmlessly onthe open ground between the forward and support trenches. Again camethat faint 'slam, ' this time repeated by four, and the 'bouquet' offour shells crumped down almost on top of the support line. The fourcrashes might have been a signal to the British guns. About a dozenreports thudded out quickly and separately, and then in one terrificblast of sound the whole line broke out in heavy fire. The infantry inthe trenches could distinguish the quick-following bangs of the gunsdirectly in line behind them, could separate the vicious swish and rushof the shells passing immediately over their heads. Apart from these, the reports blent in one long throbbing pulse of noise, anindescribable medley of moanings, shrieks, and whistling in the airrent by the passing shells. So ear-filling and confused was theclamour that the first sharp, sudden bursts of the enemy shells overour trenches were taken by the infantry for their own artillery'sshells falling short; but a very few moments proved plainly enough thatthe enemy were replying vigorously to our fire. They had the rangeswell marked, too, and huge rents began to show in our parapets, stringsof casualties began to trickle back to the dressing stations in astream that was to flow steady and unbroken for many days and nights. But the enemy defences showed more and quicker signs of damage, especially at the main points, where the massed guns were busybreaching the selected spots. Here the lighter guns were pouring ahurricane of shrapnel on the dense thickets of barbed-wireentanglements piled in loose loops and coils, strung in a criss-crossnetwork between pegs and stakes along the edge of the neutral ground;the howitzers and heavies were pounding and hammering at the parapetsand the communication trenches beyond. 

For half an hour the appalling uproar continued, the solid earth shookto the roar of the guns and the crashing of the shells. By the end ofthat time both fronts to a depth of hundreds of yards were shrouded ina slow-drifting haze of smoke and dust, through which the flashes ofthe bursting shell blazed in quick glares of vivid light, and the spotsof their falling were marked by gushes of smoke and upflung billowingclouds of thick dust. So far the noise was only and all of guns andshell fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks a new note beganto weave itself into the uproar--the sharper crackle and clatter ofrifle and machine-gun fire. 

Along the line of front marked for the main assault the guns suddenlylifted their fire and commenced to pour it down further back, althougha number of the lighter guns continued to sweep the front parapet withgusts of shrapnel. And then suddenly it could be seen that the frontBritish trench was alive and astir. The infantry, who had beencrouched and prone in the shelter of their trenches, rose suddenly andbegan to clamber over the parapets into the open and make their way outthrough the maze of their own entanglements. Instantly the parapetopposite began to crackle with rifle fire and to beat out a steadytattoo from the hammering machine-guns. The bullets hissed and spatacross the open and hailed upon the opposite parapet. Scores, hundredsof men fell before they could clear the entanglements to form up in theopen, dropped as they climbed the parapet, or even as they stood up andraised a head above it. But the mass poured out, shook itself roughlyinto line, and began to run across the open. They ran for the mostpart with shoulders hunched and heads stooped, as men would run througha heavy rainstorm to a near shelter And as they ran they stumbled andfell and picked themselves up and ran again--or crumpled up and laystill or squirming feebly. As the line swept on doggedly it thinnedand shredded into broken groups. The men dropped under the riflebullets, singly or in twos and threes; the bursting shells tore greatgaps in the line, snatching a dozen men at a mouthful; here and there, where it ran into the effective sweep of a maxim, the line simplywithered and dropped and stayed still in a string of huddled heapsamongst and on which the bullets continued to drum and thud. The openground was a full hundred yards across at the widest point where themain attack was delivering. Fifty yards across, the battalionassaulting was no longer a line, but a scattered series of groups likebeads on a broken string; sixty yards across and the groups haddwindled to single men and couples with desperately long intervalsbetween; seventy yards, and there were no more than odd occasional men, with one little bunch near the centre that had by some extraordinarychance escaped the sleet of bullets; at eighty yards a sudden swirl oflead caught this last group--and the line at last was gone, wiped out, the open was swept clear of those dogged runners. The open ground wasdotted thick with men, men lying prone and still, men crawling on handsand knees, men dragging themselves slowly and painfully with trailing, useless legs, men limping, hobbling, staggering, in a desperateendeavour to get back to their parapet and escape the bullets andshrapnel that still stormed down upon them. The British gunnersdropped their ranges again, and a deluge of shells and shrapnel burstcrashing and whistling upon the enemy's front parapet. The rifle fireslackened and almost died, and the last survivors of the charge hadsuch chance as was left by the enemy's shells to reach the shelter oftheir trench. Groups of stretcher-bearers leaped out over the parapetand ran to pick up the wounded, and hard on their heels another line ofinfantry swarmed out and formed up for another attack. As they wentforward at a run the roar of rifles and machine-guns swelled again, andthe hail of bullets began to sweep across to meet them. Into theforward trench they had vacated, the stream of another battalionpoured, and had commenced to climb out in their turn before theadvancing line was much more than half-way across. This time thecasualties, although appallingly heavy, were not so hopelessly severeas in the first charge, probably because a salient of the enemy trenchto a flank had been reached by a battalion farther along, and thedevastating enfilading fire of rifles and machine-guns cut off. Thistime the broken remnants of the line reached the barbed wires, gatheredin little knots as the individual men ran up and down along the face ofthe entanglements looking for the lanes cut clearest by the sweepingshrapnel, streamed through with men still falling at every step, reached the parapet and leaped over and down. The guns had held theirfire on the trench till the last possible moment, and now they liftedagain and sought to drop across the further lines and the communicationtrenches a shrapnel 'curtain' through which no reinforcements couldpass and live. The following battalion came surging across, losingheavily, but still bearing weight enough to tell when at last theypoured in over the parapet. 

The neutral ground, the deadly open and exposed space, was won. It hadbeen crossed at other points, and now it only remained to see if thehold could be maintained and strengthened and extended. 

The fighting fell to a new phase--the work of the short-arm bayonetthrust and the bomb-throwers. In the gaps between the points where thetrench was taken the enemy fought with the desperation of trapped rats. The trench had to be taken traverse by traverse. The bombers lobbedtheir missiles over into the traverse ahead of them in showers, andimmediately the explosions crashed out, swung round the corner with arush to be met in turn with bullets or bursting bombs. Sometimes aspace of two or three traverses was blasted bare of life and rendereduntenable for long minutes on end by a constant succession of grenadesand bombs. In places, the men of one side or the other leaped up outof the trench, risking the bullets that sleeted across the levelground, and emptied a clip of cartridges or hurled half a dozengrenades down into the trench further along. But for the most part thefight raged below ground-level, at times even below the level of thetrench floor, where a handful of men held out in a deep dug-out. Ifthe entrance could be reached, a few bombs speedily settled the affair;but where the defenders had hastily blocked themselves in with abarricade of sandbags or planks, so that grenades could not be pitchedin, there was nothing left to do but crowd in against the rifle muzzlesthat poked out and spurted bullets from the openings, tear down thedefences, and so come at the defenders. And all the time the capturedtrench was pelted by shells--high-explosive and shrapnel. At theentrances of the communication trenches that led back to the supporttrenches the fiercest fighting raged continually, with men strugglingto block the path with sandbags and others striving to tear them down, while on both sides their fellows fought over them with bayonet andbutt. In more than one such place the barricade was at last built bythe heap of the dead who had fought for possession; in others, crudebarriers of earth and sandbags were piled up and fought across andpulled down and built up again a dozen times. 

In the middle of the ferocious individual hand-to-hand fighting acounter-attack was launched against the captured trench. A swarm ofthe enemy leaped from the next trench and rushed across the twenty orthirty yards of open to the captured front line. But the counterattackhad been expected. The guns caught the attackers as they left theirtrench and beat them down in scores. A line of riflemen had beeninstalled under cover of what had been the parapet of the enemy fronttrench, and this line broke out in 'the mad minute' of rifle fire. Theshrapnel and the rifles between them smashed the counter-attack beforeit had well formed. It was cut down in swathes and had totallycollapsed before it reached half-way to the captured trench. Butanother was hurled forward instantly, was up out of the trench andstreaming across the open before the infantry had finished re-chargingtheir magazines. Then the rifles spoke again in rolling crashes, thescreaming shrapnel pounced again on the trench that still eruptedhurrying men, while from the captured trench itself came hurtling bombsand grenades. Smoke and dust leaped and swirled in dense clouds aboutthe trenches and the open between them, but through the haze the raggedfront fringe of the attack loomed suddenly and pressed on to the verylip of the trench. Beyond that point it appeared it could not pass. The British infantry, cramming full cartridge-clips into theirmagazines, poured a fresh cataract of lead across the broken parapetinto the charging ranks, and the ranks shivered and stopped and meltedaway beneath the fire, while the remnants broke and fled back to cover. With a yell the defenders of a moment before became the attackers. They leaped the trench and fell with the bayonet on the flyingsurvivors of the counter-attack. For the most part these were killedas they fled; but here and there groups of them turned at bay, and in adozen places as many fights raged bitterly for a few minutes, while thefresh attack pushed on to the next trench. A withering fire pouredfrom it but could not stop the rush that fought its way on and into thesecond-line trench. From now the front lost connection or cohesion. Here and there the attackers broke in on the second line, exterminatedthat portion of the defence in its path or was itself exterminatedthere. Where it won footing it spread raging to either side along thetrench, shooting, stabbing, flinging hand grenades and bearing down thedefenders by the sheer fury of the attack. The movement spread alongthe line, and with a sudden leap and rush the second line was gainedalong a front of nearly a mile. In parts this attack overshot itsmark, broke through and over the second line and, tearing and hackingthrough a network of wire, into the third trench. In part the secondline still held out; and even after it was all completely taken, thecommunication trenches between the first and second line were filledwith combatants who fought on furiously, heedless of whether friend orfoe held trench to front or rear, intent only on the business at theirown bayonet points, to kill the enemy facing them and push in and killthe ones behind. Fresh supports pressed into the captured positions, and, backed by their weight, the attack surged on again in a freshspasm of fury. It secured foothold in great sections of the thirdline, and even, without waiting to see the whole of it made good, attempted to rush the fourth line. At one or two points the gallantattempt succeeded, and a handful of men hung on desperately for somehours, their further advance impossible, their retreat, had theyattempted it, almost equally so, cut off from reinforcements, short ofammunition, and entirely without bombs or grenades. When theirammunition was expended they used rifles and cartridges taken from theenemy dead in the trench; having no grenades they snatched and hurledback on the instant any that fell with fuses still burning. They wagedtheir unequal fight to the last minute and were killed out to the lastman. 

The third line was not completely held or even taken. One or twoloopholed and machine-gunned dug-out redoubts, or 'keeps, ' held outstrenuously, and before they could be reduced--entrance being gained atlast literally by tearing the place down sandbag by sandbag till a holewas made and grenade after grenade flung in--other parts of the trenchhad been recaptured. The weak point that so often hampers attack wasmaking itself felt. The bombers and 'grenadiers' had exhausted thestock they carried; fresh supplies were scanty, were brought up withdifficulty, and distributed to the most urgently required places withstill greater difficulty. The ammunition carriers had to cross theopen of the old neutral ground, the battered first trench, pass alongcommunication trenches choked with dead and wounded, or again cross theopen to the second and third line. All the time they were under thefire of high-explosive shells and had to pass through a zone or'barrage' of shrapnel built across their path for just this specialpurpose of destroying supports and supplies. Our own artillery wereplaying exactly the same game behind the enemy lines, but in theselines were ample stores of cartridges and grenades, bombs, andtrench-mortars. The third and fourth lines were within easy bomb- andgrenade-throwing distance, and were connected by numerous passage-ways. On this front the contest became a bombing duel, and because theBritish were woefully short of bombs and the enemy could throw five totheir one, they were once again 'bombed out' and forced to retire. Butby now the second trench had been put in some state of defence towardsits new front, and here the British line stayed fast and set its teethand doggedly endured the torment of the bombs and the destruction ofthe pounding shells. Without rest or respite they endured till night, and on through the night, under the glare of flares and the long-drawnpunishment of the shell fire, until the following day brought with thedawn fresh supports for a renewal of the struggle. The batteredfragments of the first attacking battalions were withdrawn, often withcorporals for company leaders, and lieutenants or captains commandingbattalions whose full remaining strength would hardly make a company. The battle might only have been well begun, but at least, thanks tothem and to those scattered heaps lying among the grass, spread inclumps and circles about the yawning shell-holes, buried beneath thebroken parapets and in the smashed trenches--to them, and those, andthese others passing out with haggard, pain-lined faces, shatteredlimbs, and torn bodies on the red, wet stretchers to the dressingstations, at least, the battle was well begun. The sappers were hardat work in the darkness consolidating the captured positions, and thesewould surely now be held firm. Whatever was to follow, these firstregiments had done their share. 

Two lines of trenches were taken; the line was advanced--advanced, itis true, a bare one or two hundred yards, but with lives poured outlike water over each foot of the advance, with every inch of the groundgained marking a well-spring and fountain-head of a river of pain, of asuffering beyond all words, of a glory above and beyond all suffering. 

A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION

'_. . . Have maintained and consolidated our position in the capturedtrench. _'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

Number nine-two-ought-three-six, Sapper Duffy, J. , 'A' Section, Southland Company, Royal Engineers, had been before the War plain JemDuffy, labourer, and as such had been an ardent anti-militarist, anti-conscriptionist, and anti-everything else his labour leaders andagitators told him. His anti-militarist beliefs were sunk soon afterthe beginning of the War, and there is almost a complete story itselfin the tale of their sinking, weighted first by a girl, who lookedahead no further than the pleasure of walking out with a khaki uniform, and finally plunged into the deeps of the Army by the gibe of astauncher anti-militarist during a heated argument that, 'if hebelieved now in fighting, why didn't he go'n fight himself?' But evenafter his enlistment he remained true to his beliefs in voluntaryservice, and the account of his conversion to the principles ofConscription--no half-and-half measures of 'military training' or rifleclubs or hybrid arrangements of that sort, but out-and-outConscription--may be more interesting, as it certainly is more typical, of the conversion of more thousands of members of the Serving Forcesthan will ever be known--until those same thousands return to theircivilian lives and the holding of their civilian votes. 

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By nightfall the captured trench--well, it was only a courtesy title tocall it a trench. Previous to the assault, the British guns hadknocked it about a good deal, bombs and grenades had helped further todisrupt it in the attacks and counter-attacks during the day, andfinally, after it was captured and held, the enemy had shelled andhigh-explosived it out of any likeness to a real trench. But theinfantry had clung throughout the day to the ruins, had beaten offseveral strong counter-attacks, and in the intervals had done what theycould to dig themselves more securely in and re-pile some heaps ofsandbags from the shattered parapet on the trench's new front. Thecasualties had been heavy, and since there was no passage from thefront British trench to the captured portion of the German exceptacross the open of the 'neutral' ground, most of the wounded and allthe killed had had to remain under such cover as could be found in thewrecked trench. The position of the unwounded was bad enough andunpleasant enough, but it was a great deal worse for the wounded. Abad wound damages mentally as well as physically. The 'casualty' isout of the fight, has had a first field dressing placed on his wound, has been set on one side to be removed at the first opportunity to thedressing station and the rear. He can do nothing more to protecthimself or take such cover as offers. He is in the hands of thestretcher-bearers and must submit to be moved when and where they thinkfit. And in this case the casualties did not even have thesatisfaction of knowing that every minute that passed meant a minutefarther from the danger zone, a minute nearer to safety and to thedoctors, and the hospitals' hope of healing. Here they had to bethroughout the long day, hearing the shriek of each approaching shell, waiting for the crash of its fall, wondering each time if _this_ one, the rush of its approach rising louder and louder to an appallingscreech, was going to be the finish--a 'direct hit. ' Many of thewounded were wounded again, or killed as they lay; and from others thestrength and the life had drained slowly out before nightfall. But nowthat darkness had come the casualties moved out and the supports movedin. From what had been the German second trench, and on this portionof front was now their forward one, lights were continually going upand bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire were coming; and an occasionalshell still whooped up and burst over or behind the captured trench. This meant that the men--supports, and food and water carriers, andstretcher-bearers--were under a dangerous fire even at night incrossing the old 'neutral' ground, and it meant that one of the firstjobs absolutely necessary to the holding of the captured trench was themaking of a connecting path more or less safe for moving men, ammunition, and food by night or day. 

This, then, was the position of affairs when 'A' section of theSouthland Company of Engineers came up to take a hand, and thiscommunication trench was the task that Sapper Duffy, J. , found himselfset to work on. Personally Sapper Duffy knew nothing of, and caredless for, the tactical situation. All he knew or cared about was thathe had done a longish march up from the rear the night before, that hehad put in a hard day's work carrying up bales of sandbags and rolls ofbarbed wire from the carts to the trenches, and that here before himwas another night's hard labour, to say nothing of the prospect ofbeing drilled by a rifle bullet or mangled by a shell. All theinformation given him and his section by their section officer was thatthey were to dig a communication trench, that it must be completedbefore morning, that as long as they were above-ground they wouldprobably be under a nasty fire, and that therefore the sooner they dugthemselves down under cover the better it would be for the job and forall concerned. 'A' section removed its equipment and tunics and movedout on to the 'neutral' ground in its shirt-sleeves, shivering at firstin the raw cold and at the touch of the drizzling rain, but knowingthat the work would very soon warm them beyond need of hamperingclothes. In the ordinary course, digging a trench under fire is donemore or less under cover by sapping--digging the first part in acovered spot, standing in the deep hole, cutting down the 'face' andgradually burrowing a way across the danger zone. The advantage ofthis method is that the workers keep digging their way forward whileall the time they are below ground and in the safety of the sap theydig. The disadvantage is that the narrow trench only allows one or twomen to get at its end or 'face' to dig, and the work consequently takestime. Here it was urgent that the work be completed that night, because it was very certain that as soon as its whereabouts wasdisclosed by daylight it would be subjected to a fire too severe toallow any party to work, even if the necessary passage of men to andfro would leave any room for a working party. The digging thereforehad to be done down from the surface, and the diggers, until they hadsunk themselves into safety, had to stand and work fully exposed to thebullets that whined and hissed across from the enemy trenches. 

A zigzag line had been laid down to mark the track of the trench, andSapper Duffy was placed by his sergeant on this line and told brieflyto 'get on with it. ' Sapper Duffy spat on his hands, placed his spadeon the exact spot indicated, drove it down, and began to dig at a ratethat was apparently leisurely but actually was methodical and nicelycalculated to a speed that could be long and unbrokenly sustained. During the first minute many bullets whistled and sang past, and SapperDuffy took no notice. A couple went 'whutt' past his ear, and he sworeand slightly increased his working speed. When a bullet whistles orsings past, it is a comfortable distance clear; when it goes 'hiss' or'swish, ' it is too close for safety; and when it says 'whutt' verysharply and viciously, it is merely a matter of being a few inches outeither way. Sapper Duffy had learned all this by full experience, andnow the number of 'whutts' he heard gave him a very clear understandingof the dangers of this particular job. He was the farthest out man ofthe line. On his left hand he could just distinguish the dim figure ofanother digger, stooping and straightening, stooping and straightening, with the rhythm and regularity of a machine. On his right hand wasempty darkness, lit up every now and then by the glow of a flare-lightshowing indistinctly through the drizzling rain. Out of the darkness, or looming big against the misty light, figures came and went stumblingand slipping in the mud--stretcher-bearers carrying or supporting thewounded, a ration party staggering under boxes balanced on shoulders, astrung-out line of supports stooped and trying to move quietly, men indouble files linked together by swinging ammunition boxes. All thesethings Sapper Duffy saw out of the tail of his eye, and withoutstopping or slacking the pace of his digging. He fell unconsciously totiming his movements to those of the other man, and for a time themachine became a twin-engine working beat for beat--thrust, stoop, straighten, heave; thrust, stoop, straighten, heave. Then a bulletsaid the indescribable word that means 'hit' and Duffy found that theother half of the machine had stopped suddenly and collapsed in alittle heap. Somewhere along the line a voice called softly'Stretcher-bearers, ' and almost on the word two men and a stretchermaterialised out of the darkness and a third was stooping over thebroken machine. 'He's gone, ' said the third man after a pause. 'Lifthim clear. ' The two men dropped the stretcher, stooped and fumbled, lifted the limp figure, laid it down a few yards away from the line, and vanished in the direction of another call. Sapper Duffy was alonewith his spade and a foot-deep square hole--and the hissing bullets. The thoughts of the dead man so close beside him disturbed him vaguely, although he had never given a thought to the scores of dead he had seenbehind the trench and that he knew were scattered thick over the'neutral' ground where they had fallen in the first charge. But thisman had been one of his own company and his own section--it wasdifferent about him somehow. Yet of course Sapper Duffy knew that thedead must at times lie where they fall, because the living must alwayscome before the dead, especially while there are many more wounded thanthere are stretchers or stretcher-bearers. But all the same he didn'tlike poor old 'Jigger' Adams being left there--didn't see how he couldgo home and face old 'Jigger's' missus and tell her he'd come away andleft 'Jigger' lying in the mud of a mangel-wurzel field. Blest if hewouldn't have a try when they were going to give Jigger a lift back. Aline of men, shirt-sleeved like himself and carrying spades in theirhands, moved out past him. An officer led them, and another withSapper Duffy's section officer brought up the rear, and passed alongthe word to halt when he reached Daffy. 'Here's the outside man of mylot, ' he said, 'so you'll join on beyond him. You've just come in, Ihear, so I suppose your men are fresh?'

'Fresh!' said the other disgustedly. 'Not much. They've been diggingtrenches all day about four miles back. It's too sickening. Pity wedon't do like the Boches--conscript all the able-bodied civilians andmake 'em do all this trench-digging in rear. Then we might be freshfor the firing line. '

'Tut, tut--mustn't talk about conscripting 'em, ' said Duffy's officerreprovingly. 'One volunteer, y'know--worth ten pressed men. '

'Yes, ' said the other, 'but when there isn't enough of the "onevolunteer" it's about time to collar the ten pressed. '

Two or three flares went up almost simultaneously from the enemy'sline, the crackle of fire rose to a brisk fusillade, and through it ranthe sharp 'rat-at-at-at' of a machine-gun. The rising sound of thereports told plainly of the swinging muzzle, and officers and mendropped flat in the mud and waited till the sweeping bullets had passedover their heads. Men may work on and 'chance it' against rifle firealone, but the sweep of a machine-gun is beyond chance, and very nearto the certainty of sudden death to all in the circle of its swing. 

The officers passed on and the new men began to dig. Sapper Duffy alsoresumed work, and as he did so he noticed there was something familiarabout the bulky shape of the new digger next to him. 

'What lot are you?' asked the new man, heaving out the first spadefulrapidly and dexterously. 

'We're 'A' Section, Southland Company, ' said Duffy, 'an' I say--ain'tyou Beefy Wilson?'

'That's me, ' said the other without checking his spade. 'And blow me!you must be Duffy--Jem Duffy. '

'That's right, ' said Duffy. 'But I didn't know you'd joined, Beefy. '

'Just a week or two after you, ' said Beefy. 

'Didjer know boss's two sons had got commissions? Joined the Sappersan' tried to raise a company out o' the works to join. Couldn'tthough. I was the only one. '

'Look out--'ere's that blanky maxim again, ' said Duffy, and theydropped flat very hurriedly. 

There was no more conversation at the moment. There were too manybullets about to encourage any lingering there, and both men wanted alltheir breath for their work. It was hard work too. Duffy's back andshoulder and arm muscles began to ache dully, but he stuck doggedly toit. He even made an attempt to speed up to Beefy's rate of shovelling, although he knew by old experience alongside Beefy that he could neverkeep up with him, the unchallenged champion of the old gang. 

Whether it was that the lifting rain had made them more visible or thatthe sound of their digging had been heard they never knew, but therifle fire for some reason became faster and closer, and again andagain the call passed for stretcher-bearers, and a constant stream ofwounded began to trickle back from the trench-diggers. Duffy's sectionwas not so badly off now because they had sunk themselves hip deep, andthe earth they threw out in a parapet gave extra protection. But itwas harder work for them now because they stood in soft mud and waterwell above the ankles. The new company, being the more exposed, suffered more from the fire; but each man of them had a smaller portionof trench to dig, so they were catching up on the first workers. Butall spaded furiously and in haste to be done with the job, while theofficers and sergeants moved up and down the line and watched theprogress made. 

More cold-bloodedly unpleasant work it would be hard to imagine. Themen had none of the thrill and heat of combat to help them; they hadnot the hope that a man has in a charge across the open--that a minuteor two gets the worst of it over; they had not even the chance thefighting man has where at least his hand may save his head. Theirbusiness was to stand in the one spot, open and unprotected, andwithout hope of cover or protection for a good hour or more on end. They must pay no heed to the singing bullets, to the crash of abursting shell, to the rising and falling glow of the flares. Simplythey must give body and mind to the job in hand, and dig and dig andkeep on digging. There had been many brave deeds done by the fightingmen on that day: there had been bold leading and bold following in thefirst rush across the open against a tornado of fire; there had beenforlorn-hope dashes for ammunition or to pick up wounded; there hadbeen dogged and desperate courage in clinging all day to the batteredtrench under an earth-shaking tempest of high-explosive shells, bombs, and bullets. But it is doubtful if the day or the night had seen morenerve-trying, courage-testing work, more deliberate and long-drawnbravery than was shown, as a matter of course and as a part of the job, in the digging of that communication trench. 

It was done at last, and although it might not be a Class OneExhibition bit of work, it was, as Beefy Wilson remarked, 'a dealbetter'n none. ' And although the trench was already a foot deep inwater, Beefy stated no more than bald truth in saying, 'Come to-morrowthere's plenty will put up glad wi' their knees bein' below high-watermark for the sake o' havin' their heads below low bullet-mark. '

But, if the trench was finished, the night's work for the Engineers wasnot. They were moved up into the captured trench, and told that theyhad to repair it and wire out in front of it before they were done. 

They had half an hour's rest before recommencing work, and Beefy Wilsonand Jem Duffy hugged the shelter of some tumbled sandbags, lit theirpipes and turned the bowls down, and exchanged reminiscences. 

'Let's see, ' said Beefy. 'Isn't Jigger Adams in your lot?'

'Was, ' corrected Jem, 'till an hour ago. 'E's out yon wi' a bullet in'im--stiff by now. '

Beefy breathed blasphemous regrets. 'Rough on 'is missus an' the kids. Six of 'em, weren't it?'

'Aw, ' assented Jem. 'But she'll get suthin' from the Society funds. '

'Not a ha'porth, ' said Beefy. 'You'll remem--no, it was just arter youleft. The trades unions decided no benefits would be paid out for themas 'listed. It was Ben Shrillett engineered that. 'E was Secretaryan' Treasurer an' things o' other societies as well as ours. 'E foughtthe War right along, an' 'e's still fightin' it. 'E's a anti-militant, 'e ses. '

'Anti-militarist, ' Jem corrected. He had taken some pains himself inthe old days to get the word itself and some of its meaning right. 

'Anti-military-ist then, ' said Beefy. 'Any'ow, 'e stuck out agin allsorts o' soldierin'. This stoppin' the Society benefits was a trumpcard too. It blocked a whole crowd from listin' that I know myselfwould ha' joined. Queered the boss's sons raisin' that Company too. They 'ad Frickers an' the B. S. L. Co. An' the works to draw from. Couldha' raised a couple hundred easy if Ben Shrillett 'adn't got at 'em. You know 'ow 'e talks the fellers round. '

'I know, ' agreed Jem, sucking hard at his pipe. 

The Sergeant broke in on their talk. 'Now then, ' he said briskly. 'Sooner we start, sooner we're done an' off 'ome to our downy couch. 'Ere, Duffy'--and he pointed out the work Duffy was to start. 

For a good two hours the Engineers laboured like slaves again. Thetrench was so badly wrecked that it practically had to bereconstructed. It was dangerous work because it meant moving freely upand down, both where cover was and was not. It was physically heavywork because spade work in wet ground must always be that; and when thespade constantly encounters a debris of broken beams, sandbags, rifles, and other impediments, and the work has to be performed ineye-confusing alternations of black darkness and dazzling flares, itmakes the whole thing doubly hard. When you add in the constant whiskof passing bullets and the smack of their striking, the shriek andshattering burst of high-explosive shells, and the drone and whirr offlying splinters, you get labour conditions removed to the utmost limitfrom ideal, and, to any but the men of the Sappers, well over the edgeof the impossible. The work at any other time would have been gruesomeand unnerving, because the gasping and groaning of the wounded hardlyceased from end to end of the captured trench, and in digging out thecollapsed sections many dead Germans and some British were foundblocking the vigorous thrust of the spades. 

Duffy was getting 'fair fed up, ' although he still worked onmechanically. He wondered vaguely what Ben Shrillett would have saidto any member of the trade union that had worked a night, a day, and anight on end. He wondered, too, how Ben Shrillett would have shaped inthe Royal Engineers, and, for all his cracking muscles and theback-breaking weight and unwieldiness of the wet sandbags, he had togrin at the thought of Ben, with his podgy fat fingers and his visiblerotundity of waistcoat, sweating and straining there in the wetness anddarkness with Death whistling past his ear and crashing in shrapnelbursts about him. The joke was too good to keep to himself, and hepassed it to Beefy next time he came near. Beefy saw the jest clearlyand guffawed aloud, to the amazement of a clay-daubed infantryman whohad had nothing in his mind but thoughts of death and loading andfiring his rifle for hours past. 

'Don't wonder Ben's agin conscription, ' said Beefy; 'they mightconscription 'im, ' and passed on grinning. 

Duffy had never looked at it in that light. He'd beenanti-conscription himself, though now--mebbe--he didn't know--he wasn'tso sure. 

And after the trench was more or less repaired came the last and themost desperate business of all--the 'wiring' out there in the openunder the eye of the soaring lights. In ones and twos during theintervals of darkness the men tumbled over the parapet, dragging stakesand coils of wire behind them. They managed to drive short stakes andrun trip-wires between them without the enemy suspecting them. When alight flamed, every man dropped flat in the mud and lay still as thedead beside them till the light died. In the brief intervals ofdarkness they drove the stakes with muffled hammers, and ran thelengths of barbed wire between them. Heart in mouth they worked, oneeye on the dimly seen hammer and stake-head, the other on the Germantrench, watching for the first upward trailing sparks of the flare. Plenty of men were hit of course, because, light or dark, the bulletswere kept flying, but there was no pause in the work, not even to helpthe wounded in. If they were able to crawl they crawled, dropping flatand still while the lights burned, hitching themselves painfullytowards the parapet under cover of the darkness. If they could notcrawl they lay still, dragging themselves perhaps behind the cover of adead body or lying quiet in the open till the time would come whenhelpers would seek them. Their turn came when the low wires werecomplete. The wounded were brought in cautiously to the trench then, and hoisted over the parapet; the working party was carefully detailedand each man's duty marked out before they crawled again into the openwith long stakes and strands of barbed wire. The party lay thereminute after minute, through periods of light and darkness, until theofficer in charge thought a favourable chance had come and gave thearranged signal. Every man leaped to his feet, the stakes wereplanted, and quick blow after blow drove them home. Another lightsoared up and flared out, and every man dropped and held his breath, waiting for the crash of fire that would tell they were discovered. But the flare died out without a sign, and the working party hurriedlyrenewed their task. This time the darkness held for an unusual lengthof time, and the stakes were planted, the wires fastened, andcross-pieces of wood with interlacings of barbed wire all ready wererolled out and pegged down without another light showing. The wordpassed down and the men scrambled back into safety. 

'Better shoot a light up quick, ' said the Engineer officer to theinfantry commander. 'They have a working party out now. I heard 'emhammering. That's why they went so long without a light. '

A pistol light was fired and the two stared out into the open ground itlit. 'Thought so, ' said the Engineer, pointing. 'New stakes--see?And those fellows lying beside 'em. '

'Get your tools together, sergeant, ' he said, as several more lightsflamed and a burst of rapid fire rose from the British rifles, 'andcollect your party. Our job's done, and I'm not sorry for it. '

It was just breaking daylight when the remains of the Engineers' partyemerged from the communication trench and already the guns on bothsides were beginning to talk. Beefy Wilson and Jem Duffy between themfound Jigger's body and brought it as far as the dressing station. Behind the trenches Beefy's company and Jem's section took differentroads, and the two old friends parted with a casual 'S' long' and 'Seeyou again sometime. '

Duffy had two hours' sleep in a sopping wet roofless house, about threemiles behind the firing line. Then the section was roused and marchedback to their billets in a shell-wrecked village, a good ten milesfarther back. They found what was left of the other three sections ofthe Southland Company there, heard the tale of how the Company had beencut up in advancing with the charging infantry, ate a meal, scrapedsome of the mud off themselves, and sought their blankets and wet strawbeds. 

Jem Duffy could not get the thought of Ben Shrillett, labour leader andagitator, out of his mind, and mixed with his thoughts as he went tosleep were that officer's remarks about pressed men. That perhapsaccounts for his waking thoughts running on the same groove when hissergeant roused him at black midnight and informed him the section wasbeing turned out--to dig trenches. 

'Trenches, ' spluttered Sapper Duffy, '. . . Us? How is it our turnagain?'

'Becos, my son, ' said the Sergeant, 'there's nobody else about 'ere totake a turn. Come on! Roll out! Show a leg!'

It was then that Sapper Duffy was finally converted, and renounced forever and ever his anti-conscription principles. 

'Nobody else, ' he said slowly, 'an' England fair stiff wi' men. . . . The sooner we get Conscription, the better I'll like it. Conscriptionsolid for every bloomin' able-bodied man an' boy. An' I 'ope BenShrillett an' 'is likes is the first to be took. Conscription, ' hesaid with the emphasis of finality as he fumbled in wet straw for awetter boot, 'out-an'-out, lock, stock, 'n barrel Conscription. '

 * * * * *

That same night Ben Shrillett was presiding at a meeting of the StrikeCommittee. He had read on the way to the meeting the communiqué thattold briefly of Sapper Duffy and his fellow Engineers' work of thenight before, and the descriptive phrase struck him as sounding neatand effective. He worked it now into his speech to the Committee, explaining how and where they and he benefited by this strike, unpopular as it had proved. 

'We've vindicated the rights of the workers, ' he said. 'We've shownthat, war or no war, Labour means to be more than mere wage-slaves. War can't last for ever, and we here, this Committee, proved ourselvesby this strike the true leaders and the Champions of Labour, theGuardians of the Rights of Trade Unionism. We, gentlemen, have alwaysbeen that, and by the strike'--and he concluded with the phrase fromthe despatch--'we have maintained and consolidated our position. '

The Committee said, 'Hear, hear. ' It is a pity they could not haveheard what Sapper Duffy was saying as he sat up in his dirty wet straw, listening to the rustle and patter of rain on the barn's leaky roof andtugging on an icy-cold board-stiff boot. 

'BUSINESS AS USUAL'

The remains of the Regiment were slowly working their way back out ofaction. They had been in it for three days--three strenuous nights anddays of marching, of fighting, of suffering under heavy shell-fire, ofinsufficient and broken sleep, of irregular and unpalatable rations, ofshort commons of water, of nerve-stretching excitement and suspense, all the inevitable discomforts and hardships that in the best organisedof armies must be the part of any hard-fought action. The Regiment hadsuffered cruelly, and their casualties had totalled some sixty percent. Of the strength. And now they were coming back, jaded and worn, filthily grimed and dirty, unshaven, unwashed, footsore, and limping, but still in good heart and able to see a subject for jests andlaughter in the sprawling fall of one of their number plunging hastilyto shelter from the unexpected rush and crash of a shell, in the sultrystream of remarks from an exasperated private when he discovered abullet-pierced water-bottle and the loss of his last precious drops ofwater. 

The men were trickling out in slow, thin streams along communicationand support trenches, behind broken buildings and walls and barricades, under any cover that screened them from the watchful eyes of the enemyobservers perched high in trees and buildings and everywhere they couldobtain a good look-out over our lines. 

In the minds of the men the thoughts of almost all ran in the samegrooves--first and most strongly, because perhaps the oftenest framedin speech, that it was hot--this hot and that hot, hot as so-and-so orsuch-and-such, according to the annoyance or wit of the speaker;second, and much less clearly defined, a dull satisfaction that theyhad done their share, and done it well, and that now they were on theirway out to all the luxury of plenty of food and sleep, water to drink, water and soap to wash with; third, and increasing in proportion asthey got farther from the forward line and the chance of being hit, agreat anxiety to reach the rear in safety. The fear of being hit byshell or bullet was a hundred-fold greater than it had been duringtheir part in the action, when the risk was easily a hundred timesgreater, and more sympathy was expended over one man 'casualtied'coming out than over a score of those killed in the actual fight. Itseemed such hard lines, after going through all they had gone throughand escaping it scot free, that a man should be caught just when it wasall over and he was on the verge of a more or less prolonged spelloutside the urgent danger zone. 

The engagement was not over yet. It had been raging with varyingintensity for almost a week, had resulted in a considerable advance ofthe British line, and had now resolved itself into a spasmodic seriesof struggles on the one side to 'make good' the captured ground andsteal a few more yards, if possible; on the other, to strengthen thedefence against further attacks and to make the captured trenchesuntenable. 

But the struggle now was to the Regiment coming out a matter of almostoutside interest, an interest reduced nearly to the level of thenewspaper readers' at home, something to read or hear and talk about inthe intervals of eating and drinking, of work and amusement and sleepand the ordinary incidents of daily life. Except, of course, that theRegiment always had at the back of this casual interest the morepersonal one that if affairs went badly their routine existence 'inreserve' might be rudely interrupted and they might be hurried back andflung again into the fight. 

But that was unlikely, and meantime there were still stray shells andbullets to be dodged, the rifles and kits were blasphemously heavy, andit was most blasphemously hot. The men were occupied enough in pickingtheir steps in the broken ground, in their plodding, laboriousprogress, above all in paying heed to the order constantly passing backto 'keep low, ' but they were still able to note with a sort ofprofessional interest the damage done to the countryside. A'small-holding' cottage between the trenches had been shelled and seton fire, and was gutted to the four bare, blackened walls. The groundabout it still showed in the little squares and oblongs that haddivided the different cultivations, but the difference now was merelyof various weeds and rank growths, and the ground was thickly pittedwith shell-holes. A length of road was gridironed with deep andlaboriously dug trenches, and of the poplars that ran along its edgesome were broken off in jagged stumps, some stood with stems asstraight and bare as telegraph poles, or half cut through and collapsedlike a half-shut knife or an inverted V, with their heads in the dust;others were left with heads snapped off and dangling in grey witheredleaves, or with branches glinting white splinters and stripped naked, as in the dead of winter. In an orchard the fruit trees were smashed, uprooted, heaped pell-mell in a tangle of broken branches, bare twistedtrunks, fragments of stump a foot or a yard high, here a tree slashedoff short, lifted, and flung a dozen yards, and left head down andtrunk in air; there a row of currant bushes with a yawning shell-craterin the middle, a ragged remnant of bush at one end and the restvanished utterly, leaving only a line of torn stems from an inch to afoot long to mark their place. 

A farm of some size had been at one time a point in the advancedtrenches, and had been converted into a 'keep. ' Its late owner wouldnever have recognised it in its new part. Such walls as were left hadbeen buttressed out of sight by sandbags; trenches twisted about theoutbuildings, burrowed under and into them, and wriggled out againthrough holes in the walls; a market cart, turned upside down, andearthed over to form a bomb-store, occupied a corner of the farmyard;cover for snipers' loopholes had been constructed from ploughshares; aremaining fragment of a grain loft had become an 'observing station';the farm kitchen a doctor's dressing station; the cow-house amachine-gun place; the cellar, with the stove transplanted from thekitchen, a cooking, eating, and sleeping room. All the roofs had beenshelled out of existence. All the walls were notched by shells andpeppered thick with bullet marks. A support trench about shoulder deepwith a low parapet along its front was so damaged by shell fire thatthe men for the most part had to move along it bent almost double tokeep out of sight and bullet reach. Every here and there--where ashell had lobbed fairly in--there was a huge crater, its sides sealingup the trench with a mass of tumbled earth over which the men scrambledcrouching. Behind the trench a stretch of open field was pitted andpock-marked with shell-holes of all sizes from the shallow scoop a yardacross to the yawning crater, big and deep enough to bury the wholefield-gun that had made the smaller hole. The field looked exactlylike those pictures one sees in the magazines of a lunar landscape orthe extinct volcanoes of the moon. 

The line of men turned at last into a long deep-cut communicationtrench leading out into a village. The air in the trench was heavy andclose and stagnant, and the men toiled wearily up it, sweating andbreathing hard. At a branching fork one path was labelled with aneatly printed board 'To Battn. H. Q. And the Mole Heap, ' and the otherpath 'To the Duck Pond'--this last, the name of a trench, being areminder of the winter and the wet. The officer leading the partyturned into the trench for 'The Mole Heap, ' walked up it, and emergedinto the sunlight of the grass-grown village street, skirted a house, crossed the street by a trench, and passed through a hole chipped outof the brick wall into a house, the men tramping at his heels. Thewhole village was seamed with a maze of trenches, but these were onlyfor use when the shelling had been particularly heavy. At other timespeople moved about the place by paths sufficiently well protected byhouses and walls against the rifle bullets that had practically neverceased to smack into the village for many months past. These pathswandered behind buildings, across gardens, into and out of houseseither by doors or by holes in the wall, over or round piles of rubbleor tumbled brick-work, burrowed at times below ground-level on patchesexposed to fire, ran frequently through a dozen cottages on end, passage having been effected simply by hacking holes through theconnecting brick walls, in one place dived underground down some shortstairs and took its way through several cellars by the same simplemethod of walking through the walls from one cellar to another. Thehouses were littered with empty and rusty tins, torn and dirtyclothing, ash-choked stoves, trampled straw, and broken furniture. Theback-yards and gardens were piled with heaps of bricks and tiles, biscuit and jam tins; broken fences and rotted rags were overrun with arank growth of grass and weeds and flowers, pitted with shell-holes andstrewn with graves. 

The whole village was wrecked from end to end, was no more than acharnel house, a smashed and battered sepulchre. There was not onebuilding that was whole, not one roof that had more than a few tilesclinging to shattered rafters, hardly a wall that was not cracked andbulged and broken. 

In the houses they passed through the men could still find sufficienttraces of the former occupants to indicate their class and station. One might have been a labourer's cottage, with a rough deal table, ared-rusted stove-fireplace, an oleograph in flaming crude colours ofthe 'Virgin and Child' hanging on the plaster wall, the fragments of arough cradle overturned in a corner, a few coarse china crocks andornaments and figures chipped and broken and scattered about themantel, and the bare board floor. Another house had plainly been ahome of some refinement. The rooms were large, with lofty ceilings;there were carpets on the floors, although so covered with dirt anddried mud and the dust of fallen plaster that they were hardlydiscernible as carpets. In one room a large polished table had abroken leg replaced by an up-ended barrel, one big arm-chair had itssprings and padding showing through the burst upholstering. Anotherwas minus all its legs, and had the back wrenched off and laid flatwith the seat on the floor, evidently to make a bed. There wereseveral good engravings hanging askew on the walls or lying about thefloor, all soiled with rain and cut and torn by their splintered glass. The large open-grate fireplace had an artistically carved overmantelsadly chipped and smoke-blackened, a tiled hearth in fragments; thewall-paper in a tasteful design of dark-green and gold was blotched anddiscoloured, and hung in peeling strips and gigantic 'dog's-ears'; fromthe poles and rings over the windows the tattered fragments of a lacecurtain dangled. There was plenty of evidence that the room had beenoccupied by others since its lawful tenants had fled. It was strewnwith broken or cast-off military equipments, worn-out boots, frayed andmud-caked putties, a burst haversack and pack-valise, a holedwater-bottle, broken webbing straps and belts, a bayonet with a snappedblade, a torn grey shirt, and a goatskin coat. The windows had theshutters closed, and were sandbagged up three parts their height, theneed for this being evident from the clean, round bullet-holes in theshutters above the sandbags, and the ragged tears and holes in theupper part of the opposite wall. In an upper corner a gapingshell-hole had linen table-cloths five or six fold thick hung over toscreen the light from showing through at night. In a corner lay a heapof mouldy straw and a bed-mattress; the table and fireplace werelittered with dirty pots and dishes, the floor with empty jam andbiscuit tins, opened and unopened bully-beef tins, more being full thanempty because the British soldier must be very near starving pointbefore he is driven to eat 'bully. ' Over everything lay, like a whitewinding-sheet, the cover of thick plaster-dust shaken down from theceiling by the hammer-blows of the shells. The room door opened into apassage. At its end a wide staircase curved up into empty space, thetop banisters standing out against the open blue sky. The whole upperstorey had been blown off by shell fire and lay in the garden behindthe house, a jumble of brickwork, window-frames, tiles, beams, beds andbedroom furniture, linen, and clothes. 

These houses were inexpressibly sad and forlorn-looking, with all theirprivacy and inner homeliness naked and exposed to the passer-by and thestaring sunlight. Some were no more than heaps of brick and stone andmortar; but these gave not nearly such a sense of desolation anddesertion as those less damaged, as one, for instance, with its frontblown completely out, so that one could look into all its rooms, upperand lower and the stairs between, exactly as one looks into thosedolls' houses where the front is hinged to swing open. 

The village had been on the edge of the fighting zone for months, hadbeen casually shelled each day in normal times, bombarded furiouslyduring every attack or counter-attack. The church, with its spire ortower, had probably been suspected as an artillery observing station bythe Germans, and so had drawn a full share of the fire. All that wasleft of the church itself was one corner of shell-holed walls, and afew roof-beams torn and splintered and stripped of cover. The towerwas a broken, jagged, stump--an empty shell, with one side blown almostcompletely out; the others, or what remained of them, cracked andtottering. The churchyard was a wild chaos of tumbled masonry, brokenslates, uprooted and overturned tombstones, jumbled wooden crosses, crucifixes, black wooden cases with fronts of splintered glass, tornwreaths, and crosses of imitation flowers. Amongst the graves yawnedhuge shell craters; tossed hither and thither amongst the graves andbroken monuments and bricks and rubbish were bones and fragments ofcoffins. 

But all the graves were not in the churchyard. The whole village wasdotted from end to end with them, some alone in secluded corners, others in rows in the backyards and vegetable gardens. Most of themwere marked with crosses, each made of two pieces of packing-case orbiscuit-box, with a number, rank, name, and regiment printed inindelible pencil. On some of the graves were bead-work flowers, onothers a jam-pot or crock holding a handful of withered sun-driedflower-stalks. Nearly all were huddled in close to house or gardenwalls, one even in the narrow passage between two houses. There were, in many cases, other and less ugly open spaces and gardens offering ascore of paces from these forlorn last resting-places apparently sooddly selected and sadly misplaced; but a second look showed that ineach case the grave was dug where some wall or house afforded cover tothe burying-party from bullets. In the bright sunlight, half-hiddenunder or behind heaps of debris, with crosses leaning drunkenly aslant, these graves looked woefully dreary and depressing. But the files ofmen moving round and between them, or stepping carefully over them, hardly gave them a glance, except where one in passing caught at aleaning cross and thrust it deeper and straighter into the earth. Butthe men's indifference meant no lack of feeling or respect for thedead. The respect was there, subtle but unmistakable, instancedslightly by the care every man took not to set foot on a grave, by thestraightening of that cross, by those withered flowers and dirtywreaths, even as it has been shown scores of times by the men who crawlat risk of their lives into the open between the forward trenches atnight to bring in their dead for decent burial. 

Outside the shattered village stood the remains of a large factory, andon this the outcoming files of the Regiment converged, and the firstarrivals halted to await the rest. What industry the factory had beenconcerned with it was impossible to tell. It was full of machinery, smashed, bent, twisted, and overturned, all red with rust, mixed upwith and in parts covered by stone and brickwork, beams and irongirders, the whole sprinkled over with gleaming fragments ofwindow-glass The outside walls were almost completely knocked flat, tossed helter-skelter outwards or on top of the machinery. The tallchimney--another suspected 'observing post' probably--lay in a heap ofbroken brickwork with the last yard or two of the base standing up outof the heap, and even in its remaining stump were other raggedshell-holes. A couple of huge boilers had been torn off their brickfurnaces by the force of some monster shell and tossed clear yardsaway. One was poised across the broken outer wall, with one end in theroad. The thick rounded plates were bent and dented in like a kickedbiscuit-tin, were riddled and pierced through and through as if theyhad been paper. The whole factory and its machinery must once haverepresented a value of many thousands of francs. Now it was worth justthe value of its site--less the cost of clearing it of debris--and theprice of some tons of old iron. 

Some of the men wandered about amongst the ruins, examining themcuriously, tracing the work of individual shells, speculating on thenumber of hands the place had once employed, and where those hands werenow. 

'Man, man, ' said a Scottish private, 'sic an awfu' waste. Think o' thesiller it must ha' cost. '

''Ow would you like to be a shareholder in the company, Jock?' said hiscompanion. 'Ain't many divvydends due to 'em this Christmas. '

The Scot shook his head sadly. 'This place an' the hale toon laidwaste, ' he said. 'It's awfu' tae think o' it. '

'An' this is one bloomin' pebble in a whole bloomin' beach, ' said theother. 'D'you remember Wipers an' all them other towns? An' that oldchap we saw sittin' on the roadside weepin' 'is eyes out 'cos the farman' the fruit-trees 'e'd spent 'is life fixin' up was blowed to gloryb' Jack Johnsons. We 'ave seed some rummy shows 'ere, 'aven't we? Notbut what this ain't a pretty fair sample o' wreck, ' he continuedcritically. 'There's plenty 'ud think they'd got their two-pennorth tosee this on the screen o' a picture-show at 'ome, Jock. '

'Huh! Picturs!' sniffed Jock. 'Picturs, and the-ayters, and racin', and fitba'. Ah wanner folks hasna better use for their time and money, at sic a time 's this. '

'Aw, ' said the other, 'But y' forget, Jock. Out 'ere they 'ave their'ouses blown up an' their business blown in. A thousan' a day o' thelike o' you an' me may be gettin' killed off for six months on end. But at 'ome, Jock--aw!'

He stooped and picked up a lump of white, chalky earth from theroadside, scrawled with it on the huge boiler-end that rested on thebroken wall, and left the written words to finish the spoken sentence. 

Jock read, and later the remains of the Regiment read as they moved offpast the aching desolation of the silent factory, down the shell-tornroad, across the war-swept ruins of a whole country-side. A fewscowled at the thoughts the words raised, the most grinned and passedrough jests; but to all those men in the thinned ranks, their deadbehind them, the scenes of ruin before them, the words bit, and bitdeep. They ran:

 But it's Bisness As Usual --AT HOME. 

A HYMN OF HATE

'_The troops continue in excellent spirits. _'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIALDESPATCH. 

To appreciate properly, from the Army's point of view, the humour ofthis story, it must always be remembered that the regiment concerned isan English one--entirely and emphatically English, and indeed almostentirely East End Cockney. 

It is true that the British Army on active service has a sense ofhumour peculiarly its own, and respectable civilians have been known, when jests were retailed with the greatest gusto by soldier raconteurs, to shudder and fail utterly to understand that there could be anyhumour in a tale so mixed up with the grim and ghastly business ofkilling and being killed. 

A biggish battle had died out about a week before in the series ofspasmodic struggles of diminishing fury that have characterised most ofthe battles on the Western Front, when the Tower Bridge Foot foundthemselves in occupation of a portion of the forward line which wasonly separated from the German trench by a distance varying from fortyto one hundred yards. Such close proximity usually results in aninterchange of compliments between the two sides, either by speech, orby medium of a board with messages written on it--the board beingreserved usually for the strokes of wit most likely to sting, andtherefore best worth conveying to the greatest possible number of theenemy. 

The 'Towers' were hardly installed in their new position when a voicecame from the German parapet, 'Hello, Tower Bridge Foot! Pleased tomeet you again. '

The Englishmen were too accustomed to it to be surprised by thisuncannily prompt recognition by the enemy of a newly relieving regimentof which they had not seen so much as a cap top. 

'Hullo, Boshy, ' retorted one of the Towers. 'You're makin' a mistakethis time. We ain't the Tower Bridges. We're the Kamchatka'Ighlanders. '

'An' you're a liar if you says you're pleased to meet us again, ' put inanother. 'If you've met us afore I lay you was too dash sorry for itto want to meet us again. '

'Oh, we know who you are all right, ' replied the voice. 'And we knowyou've just relieved the Fifth Blankshires; and what's more, we knowwho's going to relieve you, and when. '

''E knows a bloomin' heap, ' said a Tower Bridge private disgustedly;'an' wot's more, I believe 'e does know it. ' Then, raising his voice, he asked, 'Do you know when we're comin' to take some more of themtrenches o' yours?'

This was felt by the listening Towers to be a master-stroke, remembering that the British had taken and held several trenches a weekbefore, but the reply rather took the wind out of their sails. 

'You can't take any more, ' said the voice. 'You haven't shells enoughfor another attack. You had to stop the last one because your gunswere running short. '

'Any'ow, ' replied an English corporal who had been handing round half adozen grenades, 'we ain't anyways short o' bombs. 'Ave a few to begoin' on with, ' and he and his party let fly. They listened withsatisfaction to the bursts, and through their trench periscopes watchedthe smoke and dust clouds billowing from the trench opposite. 

'An' this, ' remarked a Tower private, 'is about our cue to exit, thestage bein' required for a scene-shift by some Bosh bombs, ' and hedisappeared, crawling into a dug-out. During the next ten minutes acouple of dozen bombs came over and burst in and about the Britishtrench and scored three casualties, 'slightly wounded. '

'Hi there! Where's that Soho barber's assistant that thinks 'e cantalk Henglish?' demanded the Towers' spokesman cheerfully. 

That annoyed the English-speaking German, as of course incidentally itwas meant to do. 

'I'm here, Private Petticoat Lane, ' retorted the voice, 'and if Icouldn't speak better English than you I'd be shaming Soho. '

'You're doing that anyway, you bloomin' renegade dog-stealer, ' calledback the private. 'Wy didn't you pay your landlady in Lunnon for thelodgin's you owed when you run away?'

'Schweinhund!' said the voice angrily, and a bullet slapped into theparapet in front of the taunting private. 

'Corp'ril, ' said that artist in invective softly, 'if you'll go downthe trench a bit or up top o' that old barn behind I'll get thisbloomin' Soho waiter mad enough to keep on shootin' at me, an' you'llp'raps get a chance to snipe 'im. '

The corporal sought an officer's permission and later a precariousperch on the broken roof of the barn, while Private Robinson extendedhimself in the manufacture of annoying remarks. 

'That last 'un was a fair draw, Smithy, ' he exulted to a fellowprivate. 'I'll bet 'e shot the moon, did a bolt for it, when 'emobilised. '

'Like enough, ' agreed Smithy. 'Go on, ol' man. Give 'im some morejaw. '

'I s'pose you left without payin' your washin' bill either, didn't you, sower-krowt, ' demanded Private Robinson. There was no reply from theopposition. 

'I expeck you ler' a lot o' little unpaid bills, didn't you?--if youwas able to find anyone to give you tick. '

'I'll pay them--when we take London, ' said the voice. 

'That don't give your pore ol' landlady much 'ope, ' said Robinson. 'Take Lunnon! Blimy, you're more like to take root in them trenches o'yours--unless we comes over again an' chases you out. '

Again there was no reply. Private Robinson shook his head. ''E's as'ard to draw as the pay that's owin' to me, ' he said. 'You 'ave a go, Smithy. '

Smithy, a believer in the retort direct and no trafficker in the finershades of sarcasm, cleared his throat and lifted up his voice. ''Ere, why don't you speak when you're spoke to, you lop-eared lager-beerbarrel, you. Take your fice out o' that 'orse-flesh cat's-meatsossidge an' speak up, you baby-butcherin' hen-roost robber. '

'That ain't no good, Smithy, ' Private Robinson pointed out. 'Y'see, callin' 'im 'ard names only makes 'im think 'e's got you angrylike--that 'e's drawed you. '

(Another voice called something in German. )

'Just tell them other monkeys to stop their chatter, Soho, ' he calledout, 'an' get back in their cage. If they want to talk to gen'l'menthey must talk English. '

'I like your d--d impertinence, ' said the voice scornfully. 'We'llmake you learn German, though, when we've taken England. '

'Oh, it's Englan' you're takin' now, ' said Private Robinson. 'But allyou'll ever take of Englan' will be same as you took before--a tuppennytip if you serves the soup up nice, or a penny tip if you gives anEnglishman a proper clean shave. '

The rifle opposite banged again and the bullet slapped into the top ofthe parapet. 'That drawed 'im again, ' chuckled Private Robinson, 'butI wonder why the corp'ril didn't get a whack at 'im. '

He pulled away a small sandbag that blocked a loophole, and, holdinghis rifle by the butt at arm-length, poked the muzzle out slowly. Amoment later two reports rang out--one from in front and one behind. 

'I got 'im, ' said the corporal three minutes later. 'One bloke waslooking with a periscope and I saw a little cap an' one eye come overthe parapet. By the way 'is 'ands jerked up an' 'is 'ead jerked backwhen I fired, I fancy 'e copped it right enough. '

Private Robinson got to work with a piece of chalk on a board andhoisted over the parapet a notice, 'R. I. P. 1 Boshe, late lamented Sohogarçon. '

'Pity I dunno the German for "late lamented, " but they've always plentythat knows English enough to unnerstand, ' he commented. 

He spent the next ten minutes ragging the Germans, directing his mostbrilliant efforts of sarcasm against made-in-Germany English-speakersgenerally and Soho waiters in particular; and he took the fact therewas no reply from the voice as highly satisfactory evidence that it hadbeen the 'Soho waiter' who had 'copped it. '

'Exit the waiter--curtain, an' soft music!' remarked a private known as'Enery Irving throughout the battalion, and whistled a stave of 'Weshall meet, but we shall miss him. '

'Come on, 'Enery, give us 'is dyin' speech, ' some one urged, and 'Eneryproceeded to recite an impromptu 'Dyin' Speech of theDachshund-stealer, ' as he called it, in the most approved fashion ofthe East End drama, with all the accompaniments of rolling eyes, breast-clutchings, and gasping pauses. 

'Now then, where's the orchestra?' he demanded when the applause hadsubsided, and the orchestra, one mouth-organ strong, promptly struck upa lilting music-hall ditty. From that he slid into 'My Little GreyHome, ' with a very liberal measure of time to the long-drawn notesespecially. The song was caught up and ran down the trench in fullchorus. When it finished the orchestra was just on the point ofstarting another tune, when 'Enery held up his hand. 

'"'E goes on Sunday to the church, an' sits among the choir. "' hequoted solemnly and added, 'Voices 'eard, off. '

Two or three men were singing in the German trench, and as they sangthe rest joined in and 'Deutschland über Alles' rolled forth in fullstrength and harmony. 

'Bray-vo! An' not arf bad neither, ' said Private Robinson approvingly. 'Though I dunno wot it's all abart. Now s'pose we gives 'em another. '

They did, and the Germans responded with 'The Watch on the Rhine. 'This time Private Robinson and the rest of the Towers recognised thesong and capped it in great glee with 'Winding up the Watch on theRhine, ' a parody which does not go out of its way to spare Germanfeelings. 

'An' 'ow d'you like that, ol' sossidge scoffers?' demanded PrivateRobinson loudly. 

'You vait, ' bellowed a guttural voice. 'Us vind you op--quick!'

'Vind op--squeak, an' squeakin', ' retorted Private Robinson. 

The German reply was drowned in a burst of new song which ran likewild-fire the length of the German trench. A note of fierce passionrang in the voices, and the Towers sat listening in silence. 

'Dunno wot it is, ' said one. 'But it sounds like they was sayin'something nasty, an' meanin' it all. '

But one word, shouted fiercely and lustily, caught Private Robinson'sear. 

''Ark!' he said in eager anticipation. 'I do believe it's--s-sh!There!' triumphantly, as again the word rang out--the one word at theend of the verse . . . '_England_. '

'It's _it_. It's the "'Ymn of 'Ate"!'

The word flew down the British trench--'It's the 'Ymn! They're singin'the "'Ymn of 'Ate, "' and every man sat drinking the air in eagerly. This was luck, pure gorgeous luck. Hadn't the Towers, like manyanother regiment, heard about the famous 'Hymn of Hate, ' and read it inthe papers, and had it declaimed with a fine frenzy by Private 'EneryIrving? Hadn't they, like plenty other regiments, longed to hear thetune, but longed in vain, never having found one who knew it? And hereit was being sung to them in full chorus by the Germans themselves. Oh, this _was_ luck. 

The mouth-organist was sitting with his mouth open and his head turnedto listen, as if afraid to miss a single note. 

''Ave you got it, Snapper?' whispered Private Robinson anxiously at theend. 'Will you be able to remember it?'

Snapper, with his eyes fixed on vacancy, began to play the air oversoftly, when from further down the trench came a murmur of applause, that rose to a storm of hand-clappings and shouts of 'Bravo!' and'Encore--'core--'core!'

The mouth-organist played on unheedingly and Private Robinson satfollowing him with attentive ear. 

'I'm not sure of that bit just there, ' said the player, and tried itover with slight variations. 'P'raps I'll remember it better after aday or two. I'm like that wi' some toons. '

'We might kid 'em to sing it again, ' said Robinson hopefully, asanother loud cry of 'Encore!' rang from the trench. 

'Was you know vat we haf sing?' asked a German voice in tones of somewonderment. 

'It's a great song, Dutchie, ' replied Private Robinson. 'Finesong--goot--bong! Sing it again to us. '

'You haf not understand, ' said the German angrily, and then suddenlyfrom a little further along the German trench a clear tenor rose, singing the Hymn in English. The Towers subsided into rapt silence, hugging themselves over their stupendous luck. When the singer came tothe end of the verse he paused an instant, and a roar leaped from theGerman trench . . . 'England!' It died away and the singer took up thesolo. Quicker and quicker he sang, the song swirling upward in arising note of passion. It checked and hung an instant on the lastline, as a curling wave hangs poised; and even as the falling wavebreaks thundering and rushing, so the song broke in a crash of sweepingsound along the line of the German trench on that one word--'England!'

Before the last sound of it had passed, the singer had plunged into thenext verse, his voice soaring and shaking with an intensity of feeling. The whole effect was inspiring, wonderful, dramatic. One felt that itwas emblematic, the heart and soul of the German people poured out inmusic and words. And the scorn, the bitter anger, hatred, and malicethat vibrated again in that chorused last word might well have broughtfear and trembling to the heart of an enemy. But the enemy immediatelyconcerned, to wit His Majesty's Regiment of Tower Bridge Foot, weremost obviously not impressed with fear and trembling. Impressed theycertainly were. Their applause rose in a gale of clappings and criesand shouts. They were impressed, and Private 'Enery Irving, clappinghis hands sore and stamping his feet in the trench-bottom, voiced theimpression exactly. 'It beats Saturday night in the gallery o' the oldBrit. , ' he said enthusiastically. 'That bloke--blimy--'e ought to bedoin' the star part at Drury Lane'; and he wiped his hot hands on histrousers and fell again to beating them together, palms and fingerscurved cunningly, to obtain a maximum of noise from the effort. 

An officer passed hurriedly along the trench. 'If there's any firing, every man to fire over the parapet and only straight to his own front, 'he said, and almost at the moment there came a loud 'bang' from out infront, followed quickly by 'bang-bang-bang' in a running series ofreports. 

The shouting had cut off instantly on the first bang, some riflessquibbed off at intervals for a few seconds and increased suddenly to asputtering roar. With the exception of one platoon near their centrethe Towers replied rapidly to the fire, the maxims joined in, and aminute later, with a whoop and a crash the shells from a Britishbattery passed over the trench and burst along the line of the Germanparapet. After that the fire died away gradually, and about tenminutes later a figure scrambled hastily over the parapet and droppedinto safety, his boots squirting water, his wet shirt-tails flappingabout his bare wet and muddy legs. He was the 'bomb officer' who hadtaken advantage of the 'Hymn of Hate' diversion to go crawling up alittle ditch that crossed the neutral ground until he was near enoughto fling into the German trench the bombs he carried, and, as he put itlater in reporting to the O. C. , 'give 'em something to hate about. '

And each evening after that, for as long as they were in the trenches, the men of the Tower Bridge Foot made a particular point of singing the'Hymn of Hate, ' and the wild yell of 'England' that came at the end ofeach verse might almost have pleased any enemy of England's instead ofaggravating them intensely, as it invariably did the Germans opposite, to the extent of many wasted rounds. 

'It's been a great do, Snapper, ' said Private 'Enery Irving some daysafter, as the battalion tramped along the road towards 'reservebillets. ' 'An' I 'aven't enjoyed myself so much for months. Didn't itrag 'em beautiful, an' won't we fair stagger the 'ouse at the nextsing-sing o' the brigade?'

Snapper chuckled and breathed contentedly into his beloved mouth-organ, and first 'Enery and then the marching men took up the words:

 'Ite of the 'eart, an' 'ite of the 'and, 'Ite by water, an' 'ite by land, 'Oo do we 'ite to beat the band?

(deficient memories, it will be noticed, being compensated by effectiveinventions in odd lines). 

The answering roar of 'England' startled almost to shying point thehorse of a brigadier trotting up to the tail of the column. 

'What on earth are those fellows singing?' he asked one of his officerswhile soothing his mount. 

'I'm not sure, sir, ' said the officer, 'but I believe--by the words ofit--yes, it's the Germans' "Hymn of Hate. "'

A French staff officer riding with the brigadier stared inastonishment, first at the marching men, and then at the brigadier, whowas rocking with laughter in his saddle. 

'Where on earth did they get the tune? I've never heard it before, 'said the brigadier, and tried to hum it. The staff officer told himsomething of the tale as he had heard it, and the Frenchman's amazementand the brigadier's laughter grew as the tale was told. 

 We 'ave one foe, an' one alone--England!

bellowed the Towers, and out of the pause that came so effectivelybefore the last word of the verse rose a triumphant squeal from themouth-organ, and the appealing voice of Private 'Enery Irving--'Nawthen, put a bit of 'ate into it. ' But even that artist of the emotionshad to admit his critical sense of the dramatic fully satisfied by thetone of vociferous wrath and hatred flung into the Towers' answeringroar of '. . . . _England!_'

'What an extraordinary people!' said the French staff officer, eyeingthe brigadier shaking with laughter on his prancing charger. And hecould only heave his shoulders up in an ear-embracing shrug ofnon-comprehension when the laughing brigadier tried to explain to him(as I explained to you in the beginning):

'And the best bit of the whole joke is that this particular regiment isEnglish to the backbone. '

THE COST

'_The cost in casualties cannot be considered heavy in view of thesuccess gained. _'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. 

Outside there were blazing sunshine and heat, a haze of smoke and dust, anostril-stinging reek of cordite and explosive, and a never-ceasingtumult of noises. Inside was gloom, but a closer, heavier heat, adrug-shop smell, and all the noises of outside, little subdued, andmingled with other lesser but closer sounds. Outside a bitterly foughttrench battle was raging; here, inside, the wreckage of battle was beingswiftly but skilfully sorted out, classified, bound up, and despatchedagain into the outer world. For this was one of the field dressingstations scattered behind the fringe of the fighting line, and throughone or other of these were passing the casualties as quickly as theycould be collected and brought back. The station had been a fieldlabourer's cottage, and had been roughly adapted to its present use. Theinterior was in semi-darkness, because the windows were completelyblocked up with sandbags. The door, which faced towards the enemy'slines, was also sandbagged up, and a new door had been made by knockingout an opening through the mud-brick wall. There were two roomsconnected by a door, enlarged again by the tearing down of thelath-and-plaster partition. The only light in the inner room filteredthrough the broken and displaced tiles of the roof. On the floor, laidout in rows so close packed that there was barely room for an orderly tomove, were queer shapeless bundles that at first glance could hardly berecognised as men. They lay huddled on blankets or on the bare floor indim shadowy lines that were splashed along their length with irregularlyplaced gleaming white patches. They were puzzling, these patches, shining like snow left in the hollows of a mountain seen far off and inthe dusk. A closer look revealed them as the bandages of the first fielddressing that every man carries stitched in his uniform against the dayhe or the stretcher-bearers may rip open the packet to use it. A few ofthe men moved restlessly, but most lay very still. A few talked, and oneor two even laughed; and another moaned slowly and at even unbrokenintervals. Two or three lighted cigarettes pin-pricked the gloom inspecks of orange light that rose and fell, glowing and sparkling andlighting a faint outline of nose and lip and cheeks, sinking again todull red. A voice called, feebly at first, and then, as no one answered, more strongly and insistently, for water. When at last it was brought, every other man there demanded or pleaded for a drink. 

In the other room a clean-edged circle of light blazed in the centre froman acetylene lamp, leaving the walls and corners in a shadow deep bycontrast to blackness. Half the length of a rough deal table jutted outof the darkness into the circle of light, and beneath it its black shadowlay solid half-way across the light ring on the floor. 

And into this light passed a constant procession of wounded, some haltingfor no more than the brief seconds necessary for a glance at the placingof a bandage and an injection of an anti-tetanus serum, some waiting forlong pain-laden minutes while a bandage was stripped off, an examinationmade, in certain cases a rapid play made with cruel-looking scissors andknives. Sometimes a man would walk to the table and stoop a bandagedhead or thrust a bandaged hand or arm into the light. Or a stretcherwould appear from the darkness and be laid under the light, while thedoctors' hands busied themselves about the khaki form that lay there. Some of the wounds were slight, some were awful and unpleasant beyondtelling. The doctors worked in a high pressure of haste, but theprocession never halted for an instant; one patient was hardly clear ofthe light-circle before another appeared in it. There were two doctorsthere--one a young man with a lieutenant's stars on his sleeve; theother, apparently a man of about thirty, in bare arms with rolled-upshirt-sleeves. His jacket, hooked on the back of a broken chair, borethe badges of a captain's rank. The faces of both as they caught thelight were pale and glistening with sweat. The hands of both as theyflitted and darted about bandages or torn flesh were swift moving, butsteady and unshaking as steel pieces of machinery. Words that passedbetween the two were brief to curtness, technical to the last syllable. About them the dust motes danced in the light, the air hung heavy andstagnant, smelling of chemicals, the thick sickly scent of blood, thesharper reek of sweat. And everything about them, the roof over theirheads, the walls around, the table under their hands, the floor beneaththeir feet, shook and trembled and quivered without cessation. And alsowithout pause the uproar of battle bellowed and shrieked and pounded intheir ears. Shells were streaming overhead, the closer ones with a rushand a whoop, the higher and heavier ones with long whistling sighs andscreams. Shells exploding near them crashed thunderously and set thewhole building rocking more violently than ever. The rifle andmachine-gun fire never ceased, but rose and fell, sinking at times to arapid spluttering crackle, rising again to a booming drum-like roll. Thebanging reports of bombs and grenades punctuated sharply the running roarof gun and rifle fire. 

Through all the whirlwind of noise the doctors worked steadily. Unheeding the noise, the dust, the heat, the trembling of the crazybuilding, they worked from dawn to noon, and from noon on again to dusk, only pausing for a few minutes at mid-day to swallow beef-tea and abiscuit, and in the afternoon to drink tepid tea. Early in the afternoona light shell struck a corner of the roof, making a clean hole on entryand blowing out the other side in a clattering gust of flame and smoke, broken tiles and splintering wood. The room filled with choking smokeand dust and bitter blinding fumes, and a shower of dirt and fragmentsrained down on the floor and table, on the doctors, and on the men lyinground the walls. At the first crash and clatter some of the woundedcried out sharply, but one amongst them chided the others, asking hadthey never heard a Fizz-Bang before, and what would the Doctor bethinking of them squealing there like a lot of schoolgirls at a mouse inthe room? But later in the day there was a worse outcry and a worsereason for it. The second room was being emptied, the wounded beingcarried out to the ambulances that awaited them close by outside. Therecame suddenly out of the surrounding din of battle four quick car-fillingrushes of sound--sh-sh-sh-shoosh--ba-ba-ba-bang! The shells had passedover no more than clear of the cottage, and burst in the air just beyond, and for an instant the stretcher-bearers halted hesitatingly and thewounded shrank on their stretchers. But next instant the work wasresumed, and was in full swing when a minute later there came again thefour wind-rushes, followed this time by four shattering crashes, anappalling clatter of whirling tiles and brick-work. The cottagedisappeared in swirling clouds of smoke and brick-dust, and out of theturmoil came shrieks and cries and groans. When the dust had cleared itshowed one end of the cottage completely wrecked, the roof gone, thewalls gaping in ragged rents, the end wall collapsed in jumbled ruins. Inside the room was no more than a shambles. There were twenty odd menin it when the shells struck. Seven were carried out alive, and four ofthese died in the moving. In the other room, where the two doctorsworked, no damage was done beyond the breakdown of a portion of thepartition wall, and there was only one further casualty--a man who wasactually having a slight hand-wound examined at the moment. He waskilled instantly by a shell fragment which whizzed through the door-way. The two doctors, after a first hasty examination of the new casualties, held a hurried consultation. The obvious thing to do was to move, butthe question was, Where to? One place after another was suggested, onlyfor the suggestion to be dismissed for some good and adequate reason. Inthe middle of the discussion a fresh torrent of casualties began to pourin. Some plainly required immediate attention, and the doctors fell towork again. By the time the rush was cleared the question of changingposition had been forgotten, or, at any rate, was dropped. The woundedcontinued to arrive, and the doctors continued to work. 

By now, late afternoon, the fortunes of the fight were plainly turning infavour of the British. It was extraordinary the difference it made inthe whole atmosphere--to the doctors, the orderlies, thestretcher-bearers, and even--or, rather, most of all--to the wounded whowere coming in. In the morning the British attack had been stubbornlywithstood, and thousands of men had fallen in the first rushes to gain afooting in the trenches opposite. The wounded who were first brought inwere the men who had fallen in these rushes, in the forward trench, inthe communication trenches on their way up from the support trench, andfrom the shell fire on the support trenches. Because they themselves hadmade no advance, or had seen no advance made, they believed the attackwas a failure, that thousands of men had fallen and no ground had beengained. The stretcher-bearers who brought them in had a similar tale totell, and everyone looked glum and pulled a long face. About noon, although the advance on that particular portion was still hung up, areport ran that success had been attained elsewhere along the line. Inthe early afternoon the guns behind burst out in a fresh paroxysm offury, and the shells poured streaming overhead and drenched the enemytrenches ahead with a new and greater deluge of fire. The rifle fire andthe bursting reports of bombs swelled suddenly to the fullest note yetattained. All these things were hardly noted, or at most were heededwith a half-attention, back in the dressing station, but it was not longbefore the fruits of the renewed activity began to filter and then toflood back to the doctor's hands. But now a new and more encouragingtale came with them. We were winning . . . We were advancing . . . Wewere into their trenches all along the line. The casualties bore theirwounds to the station with absolute cheerfulness. This one had 'got it'in the second line of trenches; that one had seen the attack launched onthe third trench; another had heard we had taken the third in our strideand were pushing on hard. The regiment had had a hammering, but theywere going good; the battalion had lost the O. C. And a heap of officers, but they were 'in wi' the bayonet' at last. So the story ran for a fulltwo hours. It was borne back by men with limbs and bodies hacked andbroken and battered, but with lips smiling and babbling words of triumph. There were some who would never walk, would never stand upright again, who had nothing before them but the grim life of a helpless cripple. There were others who could hardly hope to see the morrow's sun rise, andothers again grey-faced with pain and with white-knuckled hands clenchedto the stretcher-edges. But all, slightly wounded, or 'serious, ' or'dangerous, ' seemed to have forgotten their own bitter lot, to have nothought but to bear back the good word that 'we're winning. '

Late in the afternoon the weary doctors sensed a slackening in theflowing tide of casualties. They were still coming in, being attended toand passed out in a steady stream, but somehow there seemed less rush, less urgency, less haste on the part of the bearers to be back for afresh load. And--ominous sign--there were many more of the bearersthemselves coming back as casualties. The reason for these things tooklittle finding. The fighting line was now well advanced, and every yardof advance meant additional time and risk in the bearing back of thewounded. 

One of the regimental stretcher-bearers put the facts bluntly and brieflyto the doctors: 'The open ground an' the communication trenches is fairhummin' wi' shells an' bullets. We're just about losin' two bearers forevery one casualty we bring out. Now we're leavin' 'em lie there snug aswe can till dark. '

A chaplain came in and asked permission to stay there. 'One of myregiments has gone up, he said, 'and they'll bring the casualties inhere. I won't get in your way, and I may be able to help a little. Hereis one of my men now. '

A stretcher was carried in and laid with its burden under the doctor'shands. The man was covered with wounds from head to foot. He lay stillwhile the doctors cut the clothing off him and adjusted bandages, butjust before they gave him morphia he spoke. 'Don't let me die, doctor, 'he said; 'for Christ's sake, don't let me die. Don't say I'm going todie. ' His eye met the chaplain's, and the grey head stooped near to theyoung one. 'I'm the only one left, padre, ' he said. 'My oldmother. . . . Don't let me die, padre. You know how--it is, back home. Don't--let me--die--too. '

But the lad was past saving. He died there on the table under theirhands. 

'God help his mother!' said the chaplain softly. 'It was her the boy wasthinking of--not himself. His father was killed yesterday--old JimDoherty, twenty-three years' service; batman to the O. C. ; would come outagain with young Jim and Walt. Been with the Regiment all his life; andthe Regiment has taken him and his two boys, and left the mother to herold age without husband or chick or child. '

The two doctors were lighting cigarettes and inhaling the smoke deeply, with the enjoyment that comes after hours without tobacco. 

Another man was borne in. He was grimed with dust and dirt, and smearedwith blood. The sweats of agony beaded his forehead, but he grinned atwisted grin at the doctors and chaplain. 'An' 'ere we are again, as thesong says, ' he said, as the stretcher was laid down. 'This makes thethird time wounded in this war--twice 'ome an' out again. But this islike to be the last trip I'm thinkin'. Wot about it, sir? Will I belosin' 'em both?' And he looked down at his smashed legs. 'Ah, Ithought so, ' he went on. 'I'm a market gardener, but I dunno 'ow I'mgoin' to market-garden without legs. Four kids too, the eldest sixyears, an' an ailin' wife. But she'll 'ave me, or wot's left o' me; an'that's more'n a many'll 'ave. '

'That'll be all right, my lad, ' said the chaplain. 'You'll have apension. The country will look after you. '

'Ah, padre--I didn't see you, sir. The country? Arst my brother Joeabout the country. Wounded in South Africa 'e was, an' never done aday's work since. An' the pension 'as been barely enough to starve ondecently. It'll be the same again arter all this is over I don't doubt. Any'ow that's 'ow we all feels about it. No, sir, I don't feel no greatpain to speak of. Sort of numb-like below there just. '

He went on talking quite rationally and composedly until he was takenaway. 

After that there was another pause, and the ambulances, for the firsttime that day, were able to get the station cleared before a fresh lotcame in. The dusk was closing in, but there was still no abatement ofthe sounds of battle. 

'There must be crowds of men lying out in front there wanting attention, 'said the captain, reaching for his coat and putting it on quietly. 'Youmight stay here, Dewar, and I'll have a look out and see if there's achance of getting forward to give a hand. '

The other doctor offered to go if the other would wait, but his offer wasquietly put aside. 'I'll get back in an hour or two, ' the captain said, and went off. Dewar and the chaplain stood in the door and watched himgo. A couple of heavy shells crashed down on the parapet of thecommunication trench he was moving towards, and for a minute his figurewas hidden by the swirling black smoke and yellow dust. But they saw hima moment later as he reached the trench, turned and waved a hand to them, and disappeared. 

'His name's Macgillivray, ' said the doctor, in answer to a question fromthe chaplain. 'One of the finest fellows I've ever met, and one of thecleverest surgeons in Great Britain. He is recognised as one of the bestalready, and he's only beginning. Did you notice him at work? The mostperfect hands, and an eye as quick and keen as an eagle's. He missesnothing--sees little things in a flash where twenty men might pass them. He's a wonder. '

And Macgillivray was moving slowly along the communication trench thatled to the forward fire trench. It was a dangerous passage, because theenemy's guns had the position and range exactly and were keeping aconstant fire on the trench, knowing the probability of the supportsusing it. In fact the supports moving up had actually abandoned the useof the approach trenches and were hurrying across the open for the mostpart. Macgillivray, reluctant at first to abandon the cover of thetrench, was driven at last to doing so by a fact forced upon him at everystep that the place was a regular shell-trap. Sections of it were blownto shapeless ruins, and pits and mounds of earth and the deepshell-craters gaped in it and to either side for all its length. Evenwhere the high-explosive shells had not fallen the shrapnel had swept andthe clouds of flies that swarmed at every step told of the blood-soakedground, even where the torn fragments of limbs and bodies had not beenleft, as they were in many places. 

So Macgillivray left the trench and scurried across the open with bulletshissing and buzzing about his ears and shells roaring overhead. Hereached the forward fire trench at last and halted there to recover hisbreath. The battered trench was filled with the men who had been movedup in support, and there were many wounded amongst them. He busiedhimself for half an hour amongst them, and then prepared to move onacross the open to what had been the enemy's front-line trench. It wasdusk now and shadowy figures could be seen coming back towards theBritish lines. At one point, a dip in the ground and an old ditch gavesome cover from the flying bullets. Towards this point along what hadbeen the face and was now the back of the enemy front trench, and then inalong the line of the hollow, a constant procession of wounded movedslowly. It was easy to distinguish them, and even to pick out in mostcases where they were wounded, because in the dusk the bandages of thefirst field dressing showed up startlingly white and clear on the shadowyforms against the shadowy background. Some, with the white patches onheads, arms, hands, and upper bodies, were walking; others, with thewhite on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, leaning on theparapet or using their rifles crutch-wise; and others lay on thestretchers that moved with desperate slowness towards safety. The lineappeared unending; the dim figures could be seen trickling along theparapets as far as the eye could distinguish them; the white dots of thebandages were visible moving as far along the parapet as the sight couldcould reach. 

Macgillivray moved out from the broken trench and hurried across theopen. There were not more than fifty yards to cross, but in that narrowspace the bodies lay huddled singly and heaped in little clumps. Theyreminded one exactly of the loafers who sprawl asleep and sunningthemselves in the Park on a Sunday afternoon. Only the dead lay in thatnarrow strip; the living had been moved or had moved themselves longsince. Macgillivray pushed on into the trench, along it to acommunication trench, and up and down one alley after another, until hereached the most advanced trench which the British held. Here apandemonium of fighting was still in progress, but to this Macgillivrayafter the first couple of minutes paid no heed. A private with a bulletthrough his throat staggered back from his loophole and collapsed in thedoctor's arms and after that Macgillivray had his hands too full withcasualties to concern himself with the fighting. Several dug-outs hadbeen filled with wounded, and the doctor crawled about amongst these andalong the trench, applying dressings and bandages as fast as he couldwork, seeing the men placed on stretchers or sent back as quickly aspossible towards the rear. He stayed there until a message reached himby one of the stretcher-bearers who had been back to the dressing stationthat he was badly needed there, and that Mr. Dewar hoped he would getback soon to help them. 

Certainly the dressing station was having a busy time. The darkness hadmade it possible to get back hundreds of casualties from places whencethey dare not be moved by day. They were pouring into the stationthrough the doctors' hands--three of them were hard at work there by thistime--and out again to the ambulances as rapidly as they could behandled. Despite the open, shell-wrecked end and the broken roof, thecottage was stiflingly close and sultry, the heavy scent of blood hungsickeningly in the stagnant air, and the whole place swarmed withpestering flies. There was no time to do much for the patients. All hadbeen more or less efficiently bandaged by the regimentalstretcher-bearers who picked them up. The doctors did little more thanexamine the bandagings, loosening these and tightening those, makinginjections to ward off tetanus, performing an operation or an amputationnow and again in urgent cases, sorting out occasionally a hopelesscasualty where a wound was plainly mortal, and setting him aside to leaveroom in the ambulances for those the hospitals below might yet save. 

One of these mortal cases was a young lieutenant. He knew himself thatthere was little or no hope for him, but he smoked a cigarette and spokewith composure, or simulated composure, to the doctor and the chaplain. 

'Hello, padre, ' he said, 'looks like a wash-out for me this time. You'llhave to break it to the pater, you know. Afraid he'll take it ratherhard too. Rough luck, isn't it, doc. ? But then . . . ' His facetwitched with pain, but he covered the break in his voice by blowing along cloud of smoke. '. . . After all, it's all in the game, y' know. ''All in the game, ' the chaplain said when he had gone; 'a cruel game, butgallantly played out. And he's the fourth son to go in this war--and thelast male of his line except his father, the old earl. A family that hasmade its mark on a good few history pages--and this is the end of it. You think it's quite hopeless for him, doctor?'

The doctor looked up in surprise from the fresh slightly wounded case hewas overhauling. 'Hopeless? Why, it's not even---- Oh! him? Yes, I'mafraid so. . . . I wish Macgillivray would come back, ' he went onirritably. 'He's worth the three of us here put together. Where we haveto fiddle and probe and peer he would just look--just half-shut thosehawk eyes of his and look, and he'd know exactly what to do and what notto do. . . . That'll do, sergeant; take him off. . . . Where's thatbottle of mine? What's this? Hand? Bandage not hurting you? Allright. Pass him over there for the anti-tetanus. Now, then! . . . '

A burly private, with the flesh of his thigh showing clear white wherethe grimy khaki had been cut clear and hung flapping, limped in andpushed forward a neatly bandaged limb for inspection. 'A doctor did thatup in the trenches, ' he remarked. 'Said to tell you 'e did it an' it wasall right, an' I only needed the anti-tempus an' a ticket for 'ome. '

'That's Macgillivray, I'll bet, ' said young Dewar. 'Where was this?'

'Fourth German trench, sir, ' said the man cheerfully. 'You know we gotfour? Four trenches took! We're winnin' this time orright. Fairly got'em goin', I b'lieve. It'll be Glorious Vict'ry in the 'eadlinesto-morrow. '

'Things like this, you know, must be, ' quoted the chaplain softly, asanother badly wounded man was brought in. 'I wonder what the victory iscosting us?'

'Never mind. It's costing t'other side more, sir, ' said the casualtygrimly, and then shut lips and teeth tight on the agony that followed. 

'I wish Macgillivray would come, ' said Dewar when that was finished. 'Hecould have done it so much better. It's just the sort of case he's athis best on--and his best is something the medical journals write columnsabout. I wish he'd come. '

And then, soon after, he did come--came on a stretcher with a bandageabout his head and over his eyes. 'Macgillivray!' cried the youngdoctor, and stood a moment staring, with his jaw dropped. 

'Yes, ' said Macgillivray with lips tight drawn. 'It's me. That's Dewar, isn't it? No need to undo the bandage, Dewar. It's my eyes--bothgone--a bullet through them both. And I'll never hold a scalpel again. You can give me some morphia, Dewar--and send me on to the ambulance outof the way. I'm no good here now--or anywhere else, now or ever. Iwon't die, I know, but----'

They gave him the morphia, and before he slid off into unconsciousness hespoke a last word to the chaplain: 'You were right, padre. Youremember . . . It's the women pay the hardest. . . . I'm thinking . . . Of . . . My wife. '

The chaplain's thoughts went back to the wife and mother of the Dohertys, to the legless market-gardener and his ailing wife, to the boy lieutenantwho was the last of his line, and a score more he knew, and his eyesfollowed as the stretcher bore out the hulk that had been a man who haddone much to relieve pain and might have done so much more. 

The voice of another new-arriving casualty broke his thoughts. 'We'rewinnin', doctor, ' it was saying exultantly. 'All along the line we'rewinnin' this time. The Jocks has got right away for'ard, an' theGhurkies is in wid their killin' knives on our left. An' the Irish is infront av all. Glory be! 'Tis a big foight this time, an' it's winnin'we are. Me good arm's gone I know, but I'd rather be here wid wan armthan annywhere else wid two. An' what's an arm or a man more or less inthe world? We're winnin', I tell ye--we're winnin'!'

A SMOKER'S COMPANION

Except for the address, 'No. 1, Park-lane, ' marked with a muddyforefinger on the hanging waterproof sheet which served as a door, there was nothing pretentious about the erection--it could not becalled a building--which was for the time being the residence of threedrivers of the Royal Field Artillery. But the shelter, ingeniouslyconstructed of hop-poles and straw thatch, was more or less rain-proof, and had the advantage of being so close to the horse-lines that half adozen strides brought the drivers alongside their 'long-nosed chums. 'It was early evening; but the horses having been watered and fed, thelabours of their day were over, and the Wheel and Lead Drivers wereluxuriating in bootless feet while they entertained the Gunner who hadcalled in from his own billet in the farm's barn. 

The Gunner was holding forth on Tobacco Gifts. 'It's like this, see, 'he said. 'An' I knows it's so 'cos I read it myself in the paper. First you cuts a coo-pon out o' the paper wi' your name an' address onit. . . . '

'But, 'ere, 'old on, ' put in the Wheel Driver. ''Ow does my name geton it?'

'You write it there, fat'ead. Didjer think it growed there? Youwrites your name same as the paper tells, see; an' you cuts out thecoo-pon an' you sends sixpence for one packet o' 'baccy. . . . '

'Wot sorter yarn you givin' us now?' said the Wheel Driver. 'I didn'tsend no sixpence, or cut out a cow-pen. I gets this 'baccy fornothin'. The Quarter tole me so. '

'Course you gets it, ' said the Gunner impatiently. 'But somebody must'a' paid the sixpence. . . . '

'You said I paid it--an' I never did, ' retorted the Wheel Driver. 

''E means, ' explained the Lead Driver, 'if you was sendin' a packet of'baccy you'd send sixpence. '

'Where's the sense in that?' said the Wheel Driver. 'Why should I sen'sixpence when I can get this 'baccy for nothin'? I got this fornothin'. It's not a issue neither. It's a Gif'. Quartermaster toleme so. '

'We know that, ' said the Gunner; 'but if you wanted to you could sendsixpence. . . . '

'I could not, ' said the Wheel Driver emphatically. 'I 'aven't seed asixpence since we lef 'ome. They even pays us in bloomin' French banknotes. An' how I'm goin' to tell, after this war's over, whether mypay's in credit----'

'Oh, shut it!' interrupted the Lead Driver. 'Let's 'ear 'ow this Giftthing's worked. Go on, chum. '

'It's this way, see, ' the Gunner took up his tale anew. 'S'pose youwants to send a gift . . . Or mebbe you'll unnerstan' this way better. S'pose your best gel wants to sen' you a gift. . . . '

'I ain't got no bes' gel, ' objected the Wheel Driver. 'I'm a marriedman, an' you knows it too. '

The Gunner took a deep breath and looked hard at the objector. 'Well, 'he said, with studied calm, 'we'll s'pose your missis at 'ome therewants to sen' you out some smokes. . . . '

'An s'pose she _does_ want to?' said the Wheel Driver truculently. 'Wot's it got to do wi' you, anyway?'

With lips pursed tight and in stony silence the Gunner glared at him, and then, turning his shoulder, addressed himself deliberately to theLead Driver. 

'S'pose _your_ missis . . . ' he began, but got no further. 

'He ain't got no missis; leastways, 'e ain't supposed to 'ave, ' theWheel Driver interjected triumphantly. 

That fact was well known to the Gunner, but had been forgotten by himin the stress of the moment. He ignored the interruption, andproceeded smoothly. 'S'pose your missis, if you 'ad one, w'ich you'aven't, as I well knows, seein' me 'n' you walked out two sisters atWoolwich up to the larst night we was there. . . . '

The Wheel Driver chuckled. 

'Thought you was on guard the las' night we was in Woolwich, ' he said. 

'Will you shut your 'ead an' speak when you're spoke to?' said theGunner angrily. 

'Never mind 'im, chum. Wot about this Gif' business?'

'Well, ' said the Gunner, picking his words carefully. 'If a man's wife_or_ gel _or_ sister _or_ friend wants to send 'im some smokes theycuts this coo-pon, same's I've said, an' sends it up to the paper, wi'sixpence an' the reg'mental number an' name of the man the gift's to goto. An' the paper buys the 'baccy, gettin' it cheap becos o' buyin'tons an' tons, an' sends a packet out wi the chap's number an' name andreg'ment wrote on it. So 'e gets it. An' that's all. '

The Wheel Driver could contain himself no longer. 'An' how d'youreckon I got this packet, an' no name or number on it--'cept a pos'cardwi' a name an' address wrote on as I never 'eard before?'

'Becos some good-'earted bloke in Blighty[1] that doesn't 'ave no palparticular out 'ere asks the paper to send 'is packet o' 'baccy to theO. C. To pass on to some pore 'ard-up orphin Tommy that ain't got no'baccy nor no fren's to send 'im like, an' 'e issues it to you. '

'It ain't a issue, ' persisted the Wheel Driver. 'It's a Gif. TheQuarter sed so 'isself. '

Splashing and squelching footsteps were heard outside, the door-curtainswung aside, and the Centre Driver ducked in, took off a soaking cap, and jerked a glistening spray off it into the darkness. 

'Another fair _soor_ of a night, ' he remarked cheerfully, slipping outof his mackintosh and hanging the streaming garment in the door. 'Bustme if I know where all the rain comes from. '

'Any luck?' asked the Lead Driver, leaning over to rearrange the stripof cloth which, stuck in a jam-tin of fat, provided what--with someimagination--might be called a light. 

'Five packets--twenty-five fags, ' said the Centre Driver. 'There wastwo or three wantin' to swap the 'baccy in their packets for the fagsin the other chaps', so I done pretty well to get five packets formine. '

''Twould 'a' paid you better to 'ave kep' your 'baccy and made fags outo' it wi' cig'rette papers, ' said the Wheel Driver. 

'Mebbe, ' agreed the Centre Driver. 'An' p'raps you'll tell me--notbeing a Maskelyne an' Cook conjurer meself--'ow I'm to produce thefag-papers. '

The Gunner chuckled softly. 

'You should 'a' done like old Pint-o'-Bass did, time we was on theAisne, ' he said. 'Bass is one of them fag-fiends that can't livewithout a cigarette, and wouldn't die happy if he wasn't smokin' one. 'E breathes more smoke than 'e does air, an' 'e ought to 'ave apermanent chimney-sweep detailed to clear the soot out of 'is lungs an'breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'imor any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn'tsooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a holewhere a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'nsnowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry on, an' wasn'tnever seen without 'is fag, excep' at meal-times, an' sleep-times, an'they bein' so infrequent an' sketchy-like, them days, wasn't 'ardlyworth countin'. 'Twas like this, see, that 'e managed it. You'llremember that, when we mobilised, some Lost Dogs' 'Ome or Society forPreventin' Christian Knowledge, or something, rushes up a issue o'pocket Testaments an' dishes out one to everybody in the Battery. Bound in a khaki cover they was, an', comin' in remarkable 'andy as anice sentimental sort o' keepsake, most of 'em stayed be'ind wi'sweet'earts an' wives. Them as didn't must 'ave gone into "Base kit, "cos any'ow there wasn't one to be raked out o' the Battery later onexcep' the one that Pint-o'-Bass was carryin'. Bein' pocketTestaments, they was made o' the thinnest kind o' paper an' Bass toleme the size worked out exackly right at two fags to the page. 'Estarted on the Creation just about the time o' Mons, an' by the timewe'd got back to the Aisne 'e was near through Genesis. All the timewe was workin' up thro' France again Bass's smokes were workin' downthrough Exodus, an' 'e begun to worry about whether the Testament wouldcarry 'im through the campaign. The other fellers that 'ad theirtongues 'anging out for a fag uster go'n borrow a leaf off o' Basswhenever they could raise a bit o' baccy, but at last Bass shut down onthese loans. "Where's your own Testament?" he'd say. "You was servedout one same as me, wasn't you? Lot o' irreligious wasters! Get aBible give you an' can't take the trouble to carry it. You'd ha' soldthem Testaments at a sixpence a sack in Woolwich if there'd been buyersat that price--which there weren't. An' now you comes beggin' a pageo' mine. I ain't goin' to give no more. Encouragin' thriftlessness, as the Adjutant 'ud call it; an', besides, 'ow do I know 'ow long thiswar's goin' to last or when I'll see a fag or a fag-paper again? I'llbe smoking Deuteronomy an' Kings long afore we're over the Rhine, an'mebbe, " he sez, turnin' over the pages with 'is thumb an' tearin' outthe Children of Israel careful by the roots, "mebbe I'll be reduced tosmokin' the inscription, 'To our Dear Soldier Friend, ' on the fly-leafafore I gets a chance to loot some 'baccy shop in Berlin. No, " 'e sez. "No. You go'n smoke a corner o' the _Pet-it Journal_, an' good enoughfor you, unprovident sacriligeous blighters, you--givin' away your owngood Testaments. "

'Young Soapy, o' the Centre Section, 'im that was struck off thestrength at Wipers later through stoppin' a Coal-Box, tried to come theartful, an' 'ad the front to 'alt the Division padre one day an' ask'im if 'e'd any spares o' pocket Testaments in store, makin' out 'e'dlost 'is through lendin' it to 'is Number One, who had gone "Missin'. "Soapy made out 'e couldn't sleep in 'is bed at night--which wasn'tsayin' much, seein' we mostly slep' in our seats or saddles themnights--becos 'e hadn't read a chapter o' the Testament first. An' theold sky-pilot was a little bit surprised--he'd 'a bin more surprised if'e knew Soapy as well as I did--an' a heap pleased, and most of allbowed down wi' grief becos 'e 'adn't no Testament that was supernumaryto War Establishment, and so couldn't issue one to Soapy. But two dayslater 'e comes 'unting for Soapy, as pleased as a dog wi' two tails, an' smilin' as glad as if 'e'd just converted the Kaiser; an' 'e lugsout a big Bible 'e'd bought in a village we'd just passed through, an'writes Soapy's name on the fly-leaf an' presents it to 'im, and tells'im 'e'll come an' 'ave a chat any time 'e's near the Battery. TheBible was none o' your fiddlin' pocket things, but a good substantialone, wi' pitchers o' Moses in the bulrushes an' Abraham scarifyin' 'isson, an' such like. An' the leaves was that thick that Soapy might aswell 'ave smoked brown paper or the _Pet-it Journal_. But that wasn'tthe worst of it. Soapy chucked it over the first 'edge soon as thepadre 'ad gone, but next day the padre rolls up and tells Soapy aSapper 'ad picked it up and brought it to 'im--'im 'avin' signed 'isname an' rank after "Presented by----" on the fly-leaf. An' 'e warnsSoapy to be more careful, and 'elps 'im stow it in 'is 'aversack, whereit took up most the room an' weighed a ton, an' left Soapy todistribute 'is bully beef an' biscuits an' cheese an' spare socks andcetera in all the pockets 'e 'ad. An even then poor Soapy wasn'tfinished, for every time the padre got a chance 'e'd 'op round an' 'avea chat, as 'e called it, wi' Soapy, the chat being a cross-examinationworse'n a Court-Martial on what chapter Soapy 'ad been readin, ' an'full explanations of same. Soapy was drove at last to readin' achapter, so 'e could make out 'e savvied something of it. '

The Gunner tapped out his pipe on the heel of his boot and began tore-fill it. 

'If you'll believe me, ' he said, 'that padre got poor Soapy pinned downso he was readin' near a chapter a day--which shows the 'orribleresults that can come o' a little bit of simple deception. '

'An' how is Pint-o'-Bass goin' on wi' his Testament?' asked the LeadDriver. 

''E don't need to smoke it, now we're in these fixed positions an'getting liberal supplies from these people that sends up to the papers'Tobacco Funds. But 'e's savin' up the rest of it. Reckons that whenwe get the Germans on the run again the movin' will be at the trotcanter an' gallop, same's before; an' the cigarette supplies won't beable to keep up the pace. An' besides, 'e sez, 'e reckons it's only afair thing to smoke a cig'rette made wi' the larst chapter down the'Igh Street o' Berlin the day Peace is declared. '

[1] England. 

THE JOB OF THE AM. COL. 

The wide door of the barn creaked open and admitted a swirl of sleetysnow, a gust of bitter cold wind, and the Bombardier. A little group ofmen round a guttering candle-lamp looked up. 

'Hello, Father Christmas, ' said the Centre Driver. 'You're a bit latefor your proper day, but we'll let you off that if you fill our stockin'sup proper. '

'Wipe yer feet careful on the mat, ' said the Lead Driver, 'an' put yerumbrella in the 'all stand. '

''Ere, don't go shakin' that snow all over the straw, ' said the WheelDriver indignantly. 'I'm goin' to sleep there presently an' the straw'sdamp enough as it is. '

'Glad you're so sure about sleepin' there, ' the Bombardier said, divesting himself of his bandolier and struggling out of his snow-coveredcoat. 'By the look o' things, it's quite on the cards you get turned outpresently an' have to take up some pills to the guns. '

'Pretty busy to-night, ain't they?' said the Centre Driver. 'We heard'em bumpin' away good-oh. '

'You don't 'ear the 'alf of it back 'ere, ' said the Bombardier. 'Wind'sblowin' most o' the row away. They're goin' it hot an' strong. Nowwhere's my mess-tin got to? 'Aven't 'ad no tea yet, an' it's near eighto'clock. I'm just about froze through too. '

'Here y'are, ' said the Centre Driver, throwing a mess-tin over. 'An' thecook kep' tea hot for you an' the rest that was out. '

'Pull that door shut be'ind you, ' said the Wheel Driver. 'This barn'scold as a ice-'ouse already, an' the roof leaks like a broke sieve. Billet! Strewth, it ain't 'arf a billet!'

The Bombardier returned presently with a mess-tin of 'raw' (milkless andsugarless) tea and proceeded to make a meal off that, some stone-hardbiscuits and the scrapings of a pot of jam. 

'What sort o' trip did you 'ave?' asked the Centre Driver. 'Anywayspeaceful, or was you dodgin' the Coal-Boxes this time?'

'Not a Coal-Box, or any other box, ' said the Bombardier, hammering abiscuit to fragments with a rifle-butt. 'An' I 'aven't 'ad a shell dropnear me for a week. '

'If we keeps on like this, ' said the Centre Driver, 'we'll get fancyin'we're back on Long Valley man-oovers. '

'Wot you grousin' about anyway?' remarked the Wheel Driver. 'This is aAmmunition Column, ain't it? Or d'you s'pose it's an Am. Col. 's biznessto go chasin' after bombardments an' shell-fire. If you ain't satisfiedyou'd better try'n get transferred to the trenches. '

'Or if that's too peaceful for you, ' put in the Lead Driver, 'you mightapply to be sent to England where the war's ragin' an' the Zeppelins iskillin' wimmin an' window-panes. '

'Talkin' o' transferring to the trenches, ' said the Bombardier puttingdown his empty mess-tin and producing his pipe. 'Reminds me o' aLeft'nant we 'ad join us a month or two back. It was the time you chapswas away attached to that other Division, so you didn't know 'im. 'E'dbin with a Battery right through, but 'e got a leave an' when 'e comeback from England 'e was sent to us. 'Is batman[1] tole me 'e was a bitupset at first about bein' cut adrift from 'is pals in the Battery but 'eperked up an' reckoned 'e was goin' to 'ave things nice an' cushy for abit. An' 'e as much as says so himself to me the first time 'e wastakin' ammunition up an' I was along with 'im. I'd been doin' orderly atthe Battery an' brought down the requisition for so many rounds, an' itbein' the Left'nant's first trip up, an' not knowin' the road 'e 'as meup in front with 'im to show the way. It was an unusual fine mornin' Iremember, 'avin' stopped rainin' for almost an hour, an' just as westarted somethin' that might 'ave been a sun tried 'is 'ardest to shine. Soon as we was on the road the Left'nant gives the word to march at ease, an' lights up a cig'rette 'imself. 

'"Great mornin' ain't it, Bombardier?" 'e sez. "Not more'n a foot or twoo' mud on the roads, an' the temperature almost above freezin'-point. I'm just about beginnin' to like this job on the Am. Col. 'Ave you binwith a Battery out 'ere?"

'I tole 'im yes an' came to the Column after bein' slightly wounded. 

'"Well, " 'e sez, "you knows 'ow much better off you are 'ere. You don't'ave no standin' to the gun 'arf the night in the rain, an' live all therest o' the nights an' all the days in a dirty, muddy, stuffy funk-'ole. That's the one thing I'm most glad to be out of, " 'e sez. "Livin' underthe ground, like a rabbit in a burrow with every chance of 'avin' 'is'ead blowed off if 'e looks up over the edge. I've 'ad enough o'dug-outs an' observin' from the trenches, an' Coal-Box dodgin' to last mea bit, an' it's a pleasant change to be ridin' a decent 'orse on a mostindecent apology for a road, an' not a Jack Johnson in sight, even ifthey are in 'earing. "

''E made several more remarks like that durin' the mornin', an' of courseI agreed with 'im. I mostly does agree with an officer an' most especiala young 'un. If you don't, 'e always thinks 'e's right an' you're justthat much big a fool not to know it. An' the younger 'e is, the moreright 'e is, an' the bigger fool you or anyone else is. 

'Well, the Left'nant's enthoosy-ism cools off a bit when it begins torain again like as if some one had turned on the tap o' a waterfall, buthe tried to cheer himself remarkin' that most likely 'is Battery wasbein' flooded out of their dug-outs. But I could see he was beginnin' todoubt whether the Am. Col. 's job was as cushy as he'd reckoned when theoff-lead o' Number One wagon tries a cross-Channel-swim act in one ofthem four-foot deep ditches. The wagons 'ad to pull aside to let sometransport motor-lorries past an' One's off-lead that was a new 'orse justcome to the Column from Base Remounts an' had some objections tomotor-lorries hootin' in his ear an' scrapin' past a eighth of an inchfrom his nose--'e side-slipped into the ditch. 'E stood there wi' thewater up to 'is shoulder an' the lead driver lookin' down on 'im an'repeatin' rapid-fire prayers over 'im. I may say it took the best bit o'half an hour to get that blighter on to the road again an' the Left'nantprancin' round an' sayin' things a parrot would blush to repeat. But 'edid more than say things, an' I'm willin' to admit it. 'E got down offhis horse an' did 'is best to coax the off-lead out wi' kind words an' aridin' cane. An' when they missed fire an' we got a drag-rope round thesilly brute the Left'nant laid 'old an' muddied himself up wi' the rest. We 'ad to dig down the bank a bit at last an' hook a team on thedrag-rope, an' we pulled that 'orse out o' the mud like pullin' a corkfrom a bottle. It was rainin' in tons all this time an' I fancy theLeft'nant's opinion o' the Am. Col. 's job had reined back another pace ortwo, especially as he'd slipped an' come down full length in the mud whenhaulin' on the drag-rope, an' had also slid one leg in the ditch wellover the boot-top in reachin' out for a good swipe wi' the cane. 

'We plods off again at last, an' presently we begins to get abreast o'some position where one o' our big siege guns was beltin' away. A bitfurther on, the road took a turn an' the siege gun's shells were roarin'along over our heads like an express train goin' through a tunnel; an'the Left'nant kept cockin' a worried eye round every time she banged an'presently 'e sez sharp-like to the drivers to walk out their teams andget clear of the line of fire. 

'"If a German battery starts trying to out that feller, " he sez to me, "we just about stand a healthy chance of meetin' an odd shell or twothat's tryin' for the range. "

'We had to pass through a bit of a town called Palloo, [2] an' just beforewe comes to it we met some teams from one of the Column's other sectionscomin' back. Their officer was in front an' as we passed he called tothe Left'nant that Palloo had been shelled that mornin' an' theHeadquarter Staff near blotted out. 

'I could just see the Left'nant chewin' this over as we went on, an'presently he asks me if it's anyways a frequent thing for us to comeunder fire takin' ammunition up. I told 'im about a few o' the times I'dseen it happen myself, an' also about how we had the airmen an' theGerman guns makin' a dead set at the Column durin' the Retreat an'shellin' us out o' one place after the other. 

'Before I finished it we hears the whoop o' a big shell an' a crash inthe town, an' the drivers begins to look round at each other. Bang-banganother couple o' shells drops in poor old Palloo, an' the drivers beginsto look at the Left'nant an' to finger their reins. He kep' on, an' ofcourse I follows 'im an' the teams follows us. 

'"I see there's a church tower in the town, Bombardier, " he sez. "Doesour road run near it?"

'I told him we 'ad to go through the square where the church stood. 

'"Then we come pretty near walkin' through the bull's-eye o' theirtarget, " he sez; "for I'll bet they're reckonin' on an observation postbein' in the tower, an' they're tyin' to out it. "

'We got into Palloo an' it was like goin' through it at midnight, onlywi' daylight instead of lamp-light. There wasn't an inhabitant to beseen, except one man peepin' up from a cellar gratin', an' one womanrunnin' after a toddlin' kid that 'ad strayed out. She was shriekin'quick-fire French at it an' when she grabbed it up an' started back thekid opened 'is lungs an' near yelled the roof off. The woman ran into ahouse an' the door slammed an' shut off the shriekin' like liftin' theneedle off a gramaphone disc. An' it left the main street most awfulempty an' still wi' the jingle o' the teams' harness an' clatter o' thewagon wheels the only sounds. Another few shells came in an' one hit ahouse down the street in front of us. We saw the slates an' the chimneypots fair jump in the air an' the 'ole 'ouse sort of collapsed in a heapan' a billowin' cloud o' white smoke an' dust. There was some of ourtroops hookin' a few wounded civilians out as we passed and the road wascluttered up wi' bricks an' half a door an' broken bits o' chairs an'tables an' crockery. Fair blew the inside out o' the house, that shelldid. 

'When we come clear o' the town there was a long stretch o' clear road tocover, an' we was ploddin' down this when we hears the hum o' anairyplane. The Left'nant squints up an' "It's a Tawb, " he sez. 

'"Beggin' your pardon sir, " I told 'im, "but it's a German. No mistakin'them bird-shaped wings an' tail. He's a German, sure enough. "

'"That's what I just said, Bombardier, " he sez, which it wasn't but Iknew it was no use sayin' so. 

'The airyplane swoops round an' comes flyin' straight to us an' passedabout our heads an' circles round to have a good look at us. TheLeft'nant was fair riled. 

'"Dash 'is impidence, " he sez. "If he'd only come a bit lower we mightfetch him a smack"; an' he tells the gunners to get their rifles out. But the German knew too much to come close down though he flew right overus once or twice. 

'"Why in thunder don't some of our guns have a whale at 'im, '" theLeft'nant says angry-like, "'or our airmen get up an' shoot some holes in'im. He'll be droppin' a clothes-basketful o' bombs on my wagonspresently, like as not. An' I can't even loose off a rifle at thebounder. Good Lord, that ever I should live to walk along a road like atame sheep an' let a mouldy German chuck parcels o' bombs at me withoutme being able to do more'n shake my fist at 'im. . . . " 'An he sworemost vicious. The airyplane flew off at last but even then the Left'nantwasn't satisfied. "He'll be off back 'ome to report this AmmunitionColumn on this particular spot on the road, " he sez, "if he's not tickin'off the glad tidings on a wireless to 'is batteries now. An' presently Isuppose they'll start starring this road wi' high-explosive shell. Didever you know a wagon full to the brim wi' lyddite being hit by ahigh-explosive, Bombardier, or hear how 'twould affect the Column'shealth?"

'"I knew of a German column that one of our airyplanes dropped a bomb on, at the Aisne, sir, " I sez. "I passed the place on the road myself soonafter. "

'"An' what happened?" he asks, an' I told 'im it seemed the bomb explodedthe wagon it hit an' the wagons exploded each other. "That AmmunitionColumn, " I sez, "went off like a packet o' crackers, one wagon after theother. An' when we came up, all that was left o' that column was a reeko' sulphur an' a hole in the road. "

'"That's cheerful, " sez the Left'nant. "With us loaded down to thegunn'l wi' lyddite, an' the prospect o' being a target for every Germangun within range o' this road. " He fidgeted in his saddle a bit, an'then, "I suppose, " he sez, "they'll calculate our pace an' the distancewe've moved since this airman saw us, an' they'll shell the section o'road just ahead of us now to glory. I'd halt for a bit just to cheat'em, for they'll shoot by the map without seein' us. But thatrequisition for lyddite was urgent, wasn't it?"

'I told him it was so, an' the Battery captain had told me to get it inquick to the column. 

'"Then we'll just have to push on an' chance it, " sez the Left'nant, "though I must own I do hate being made a helpless runnin'-deer target toevery German gunner that likes to coco-nut shy at me. . . . Like apacket o' crackers. . . . Good Lord!"

'We plodded on, the Left'nant spurrin' his horse on and reinin' him back, an' cockin' his ear for the first shell bumpin' on the road. Nothin'happened for quite a bit after that, an' I was just about beginnin' tofeel satisfied that the Germ bird 'ad run into a streak o' air that ouranti-aircraft guns kept strickly preserved an' that they'd served aTrespassers-will-be-Spiflicated notice on 'im an' had punctured him an'his wings. But just as we rounded a curve an' came into a long straightpiece o' the road, I hears a high-risin' swoosh an' before it finishedan' before the bang o' the burst reached us, spout goes a cloud o' blacksmoke 'way far down the road. '

'"This, " says the Left'nant, "is goin' to be highly interestin', not tosay excitin', presently. I figure that's either a four-point-two or afive-point-nine-inch high-explosive Hun. An' there's another o' the dosefrom the same bottle, an' about a hundred yards this way along the road. I dunno how their high-explosive will mix wi' ours, but if they get onedirect hit on a wagon we'll know all about it pretty quick. A Brock'sCrystal Palace firework show won't be in it wi' the ensooin' performance. An' that remark o' yours, bombardier, about a packet o' crackers recursto my min' wi' most disquietin' persistency. 'An' still they come, ' asthe poet remarks. "

'They was comin' too, an' no fatal error. No hurry about 'em, but a mostalarmin' regularity. They was all pitchin' plumb on that road, an' eachone about fifty to a hundred yards nearer our procession, an' us walkin'straight into the shower too. The swoosh-bang o' each one kep' gettin'louder an' louder, an' not a single one was missin' the road. I tellyou, I could feel the flesh creepin' on my bones an' a feelin' in the pito' my stomach like I'd swallowed a tuppenny ice-cream whole. There wasno way o' dodgin', remember. We'd a ditch lippin' full o' water alongboth sides o' the road an' we knew without lookin'--though the Left'nantdid 'ave one squint--that they was the usual brand o' ditch hereabouts, anythin' down to six foot deep an' sides cut down as straight as a cellarwall. It was no use trottin' 'cos we might just be hurryin' up to be intime to arrive on the right spot to meet one. An' it was no use haltin'for exactly the same reason. The Left'nant reins back beside the leadin'team, an' believe me there wasn't one pair o' eyes in all that outfitthat wasn't glued on 'im nor a pair o' ears that wasn't waitin' anxiousfor some order to come, an' I'm includin' my own eyes an' ears in thecatalogue. There was nothin' to be done an' nothin' to be said, an' weall knew it, but at the same time we was ready to jump to any order theLeft'nant passed out. The shells was droppin' at about ten to fifteenseconds' interval, an' we could see it was goin' to be a matter o' blindluck whether one pitched short or over or fair a-top o' us. They werecloser spaced, too, as they come nearer, an' I reckon there wasn't more'nfifty or sixty yards atween the last two or three bursts. An' we wasstill walkin' on, every man wi' his reins short an' feelin' 'is 'orse'smouth, an' his knees grippin' the saddle hard. 

'"Bang!" one hits the road about one-fifty to two hundred yards short an'we heard chips o' it whizz an' hum past us. The Left'nant looks, round. "When I say 'trot' you'll trot, " he shouts, "an' no man is to stop orslow up to pick up anyone hit. "

'Next second, "Crash!" comes another about a hundred yards off, an'before the lumps of it sung past, "Ter-r-rot!" yells the Left'nant. Nowsome people might call the en-sooin' movement a trot, an' some might callit a warm canter an' first cousin to a gallop. We sees the game in awink--to get past the spot the next crump was due to arrive on afore itdid arrive. We did it too--handsome an' wi' some to spare, though when Iheard the roarin' swoosh of it comin' down I thought we was for it an' adireck hit was due. But it went well over an' none of the splinterstouched. 

'"Steady there, steady, " shouts the Left'nant "but keep goin'. They'llrepeat the series if they've any sense. " We could hear the blighterscrumpin' away back down the road behind us, an' believe me we kep' goin'all right. But the Boshe didn't repeat the series; he went on a new gamean' just afore we came to the end o' the straight stretch four crumpspitched down astride the road ahead of us about two hundred yards. Onehit the edge o' the road an' the others in the fields on both sides an'one of these was a dud an' didn't burst. But we knew that the fellersthat did go off would make a highly unhealthy circle around an' theprospect o' being there or thereabouts when the next boo-kay landedwasn't none too allurin'. The Left'nant yells to come on, an' we came, oh, take it from me, we came a-humpin'. There was some fancy drivingpast them crump holes in the road, but we might have been at Olympia theway them drivers shaved past at the canter. We was just past the lastspot the four landed when I heard the whistle o' another bunch comin' an'my hair near lifted my cap off. Them wagons o' ours isn't built for anyspeed records but I fancy they covered more ground in the next fewseconds than ever they've done before. But goin' our best, there was nohope o' clearin' the blast o' the explosions if they explosioned on thesame target, an' we all made ourselves as small as we could on ourhorses' backs an' felt we was as big as a barn all the time the rush wasgettin' louder an' louder. Then thud-thud-thud an' crash! three of 'emdropped blind an' only the one exploded; an' it bein' in the ditch didn'tdo any harm beyond sendin' up a spout o' water about a mile high. Threeduds out o' four--if that wasn't a miracle I want to know. But we wasn'tcountin' too much on it bein' miracle day an' we kept the wheels goin'round with the whistle over-'ead an' the crashes behind to discourage anyloiterin' to gather flowers by the way. 

'An' when we was well past an' slowed down again I heard the Left'nantdraw a deep breath an' say soft-like ". . . A packet o' Chinese crackers. "

'But 'e said something stronger that same night. He'd just crawled backto the Column wi' his empty wagons leavin' me as orderly at the Battery, an' me havin' a pressin' message to take back for more shells I trottedout an' got back soon after he did. I took my message to the old farmwhere the officers was billeted an' the mess-man takes my note in. I gota glimpse o' the Left'nant wi' his jacket an' boots off an' his breechesfollowin' suit. "I'd a rotten day, " he was sayin', "but one good pointabout this Am. Col. Job--an' the only one I see--is that you get thenight in bed wi' your breeches off. "

'But if you'd only 'eard 'im when he found he was for the road again atonce an' would spend 'is night in the rain an' dark instead of inbed--well, I couldn't repeat 'is language, not 'aving the talent to 'isextent. 

''E was transferred to a battery soon after an' I 'eard that when he gotthe orders all 'e 'ad to say was, "Thank 'Eaven. I'll mebbe get shelledoftener in a battery, but at least I'll 'ave the satisfaction o' shellin'back--an' _I may_ 'ave a funk-hole handy to duck in when it's extry hot, instead o' ridin' on the road an' expectin' to go off like a packet 'ocrackers. "

'Mebbe he was right, ' concluded the Bombardier reflectively. 'But Is'pose it's entirely a matter o' taste, an' how a man likes bein' killedoff. '

[1] Servant. 

[2] The identity of the town is very effectually placed beyondrecognition by the Bombardier's pronunciation. 

THE SIGNALLER'S DAY

The gun detachment were curled up and dozing on the damp straw of theirdug-out behind the gun when the mail arrived. The men had had an earlyturn-out that morning, had been busy serving or standing by the gun allday, and had been under a heavy shell fire off and on for a dozen hourspast. As a result they were fairly tired--the strain and excitement ofbeing under fire are even more physically exhausting somehow than hardbodily labour--and might have been hard to rouse. But the magic words'The mail' woke them quicker than a round of gun-fire, and they sat upand rubbed the sleep from their eyes and clustered eagerly round theNumber One (sergeant in charge of the detachment) who was 'dishing out'the letters. Thereafter a deep silence fell on the dug-out, therecipients of letters crowding with bent heads round the gutteringcandle, the disappointed ones watching them with envious eyes. 

An exclamation of deep disgust from the Signaller brought no commentuntil the last letter was read, but then the Limber Gunner rememberedand remarked on it. 

'What was that you was rearin' up an' snortin' over, Signals?' heasked, carefully retrieving a cigarette stump from behind his ear andlighting up. 

The Signaller snorted again. 'Just 'ark at this, ' he said, unfoldinghis letter again. 'I'll just read this bit, an' then I'll tell you thesort of merry dance I've 'ad to-day. This is from an uncle o' mine inLondon. 'E grouses a bit about the inconvenience o' the dark streets, an' then 'e goes on, "Everyone at 'ome is wonderin' why you fellowsdon't get a move on an' do somethin'. The official despatches keeps onsayin' 'no movement, ' or 'nothin' to report, ' or 'all quiet, ' till itlooks as if you was all asleep. Why don't you get up an' go for 'em?"'

The Signaller paused and looked up. 'See?' he said sarcastically. 'Everyone at 'ome is wonderin', an' doesn't like this "all quiet"business. I wish everyone at 'ome, including this uncle o' mine, 'adbeen up in the trenches to-day. '

'Have a lively time?' asked the Number One. 'We had some warmishspells back here. They had the range to a dot, and plastered usenthusiastic with six- an' eight-inch Johnsons an' H. E. Shrapnel. We'dthree wounded an' lucky to get off so light. '

'Lively time's the right word for my performance, ' said the Signaller. 'Nothin' of the "all quiet" touch in my little lot to-day. It startedwhen we was goin' up at daybreak--me an' the other telephonist wi' theForward Officer. You know that open stretch of road that takes you upto the openin' o' the communication trenches? Well, we're just nicelyout in the middle o' that when Fizz comes a shell an' Bang just overour 'eads, an' the shrapnel rips down on the road just behind us. ThenBang-Bang-Bang they come along in a reg'lar string down the road. Theycouldn't see us, an' I suppose they was just shooting on the map in thehopes o' catching any reliefs o' the infantry on the road. Most o' theshells was percussion, after the first go, an' they was slam-bangin'down in the road an' the fields alongside an' flinging dirt and gravelin showers over us. "Come on, " sez the Forward Officer; "this localityis lookin' unhealthy, " an' we picked up our feet an' ran for it. Whywe wasn't all killed about ten times each I'll never understand; but wewasn't, an' we got to the end o' the communication trench an' divedinto it as thankful as any rabbit that ever reached 'is burrow with aterrier at 'is tail. After we got a bit o' breath back we ploughedalong the trench--it was about ankle deep in bits--to the InfantryHeadquarters, an' the F. O. Goes inside. After a bit 'e comes out an'tells me to come on wi' him up to the Observation Post. This was abouteight ac emma [A. M. ], an' just gettin' light enough to see. You knowwhat that Observin' Post of ours is. The F. O. 'as a fond de-looshunthat the Germs can't see you when you leave the support trench an'dodge up the wreckage of that hedge to the old house; but I 'ave my ownopinions about it. Anyway I've never been up yet without a mostun-natural lot o' bullets chippin' twigs off the hedge an' smackin'into the ditch. But we got into the house all right an' I unslings myTelephone--Portable--D Mark III. , an' connects up with the Batterywhile the F. O. Crawls up into the top storey. 'E hadn't been therethree minutes when smack . . . Smack, I hears two bullets hit the tilesor the walls. The F. O. Comes down again in about ten minutes an' hasa talk to the Major at the Battery. He reports fairly quiet exceptsome Germ Pip-Squeak shells droppin' out on our right, an' a good dealo' sniping rifle fire between the trenches in front of us. As ageneral thing I've no serious objection to the trenches snipin' eachother, if only the Germs 'ud aim more careful. But mostly they aimsshockin' an' anything that comes high for our trench just has the rightelevation for our post. There's a broken window on the ground floortoo, lookin' out of the room we uses straight at the Boshies, an' theF. O. Wouldn't have me block this up at no price. "Concealment, " sezhe, "is better than protection. An' if they see that window sandbaggedup it's a straight tip to them this is a Post of some sort, an' ahearty invitation to them to plunk a shell or two in on us. " Maybe 'ewas right, but you can't well conceal a whole house or even the fourwalls o' one, so I should 'ave voted for the protection myself. Anyhow, 'e said I could build a barricade at the foot o' the stairs, where I'd hear him call 'is orders down, an' I'd be behind some cover. This motion was seconded by a bullet comin' in the window an' puttin' ahole in the eye o' a life-size enlargement photo of an old lady in apoke-bonnet hangin' on the wall opposite. The row of the splinterin'glass made me think a Jack Johnson had arrived an' I didn't waste timegettin' to work on my barricade. I got a arm-chair an' the half of asofa an' a broken-legged table, an' made that the foundation; an' upagainst the outside of them I stacked a lot o' table linen an' booksan' loose bricks an' bottles an' somebody's Sunday clothes an' a fenderan' fire-irons an' anything else I thought any good to turn a bullet. I finished up by prizin' up a hearthstone from the fireplace an'proppin' it up against the back o' the arm-chair an' sittin' down mostluxurious in the chair an' lighting up my pipe. That's a long ways themost comfortable chair I've ever sat in--deep soft springy seat an'padded arms an' covered in red velvet--an' I was just thinkin' what atreat it was when I hears the rifle fire out in front beginnin' tobrisk up, an' the Forward Officer calls down to me to warn the Batteryto stand by because o' some excitement in the trenches. "Major sayswould you like him to give them a few rounds, sir, " I shouts up, an'the F. O. Says, "Yes--three rounds gun-fire, on the lines the guns arelaid. " So off goes your three rounds, an' I could hear your shellswhoopin' along over our heads. 

'"Number One gun add twenty-five yards, " calls down the F. O. , an' thengives some more corrections an' calls for one round battery fire. Bythis time the rifle fire out in front was pretty thick and the bulletswas hissin' an' whinin' past us an' crackin' on the walls. Another onecame through the window an' perforated the old lady's poke-bonnet, butnone o' them was comin' near me, an' I was just about happilyconcludin' I wasn't in the direct line o' fire an' was well coveredfrom strays. So I was snuggin' down in my big easy chair with the DMark III. On my knee, puffin' my pipe an' repeatin' the F. O. 's ordersas pleasant as you please when crack! a bullet comes with an almightysmack through the back o' the arm-chair, bare inches off my ear. Comfort or no comfort, thinks I, this is where I resign the chair, an'I slides out an' squats well down on the wet floor. It's surprisin'too the amount o' wet an ordinary carpet can hold, an' the chap thatdesigned the pattern o' this one might 'ave worked in some water liliesan' duckweed instead o' red roses an' pink leaves if he'd known 'ow itwould come to be used. This 'ouse 'as been rather a swagger one, judgin' by the style o' the furniture, but one end an' the roof 'avinggone west with the shellin' the whole show ain't what it might be. An'when the missus as it belongs to returns to 'er 'appy 'ome there'sgoing to be some fervent remarks passed about the Germs an' the wargenerally. 

'But to get on wi' the drill--the row in the trenches got hotter an'hotter, an' our house might 'ave been a high-power magnet for bullets, the way they was comin' in, through that open window special. The oldlady lost another eye an' half an' ear, an' 'er Sunday gown an' a biggold brooch was shot to ribbons. A bullet cut the cord at last, an'the old girl came down bump. But I'd been watchin' 'er so long I feltshe oughtn't to be disgraced lyin' there on 'er face before the Germanfire. So I crawled out an' propped 'er up against the wall with 'erface to the window. I 'ope she'd be glad to know 'er photo went downwith flyin' poke-bonnet. '

'It was shortly after this our wire was first cut--about ten ac emma[A. M. ] that would be. I sings out to the F. O. That I was disc[1], butwhat wi' the bullets smackin' into the walls, the shells passin' overus, the Coal-Boxes bursting around, an' the trenches belting off attheir hardest, the F. O. Didn't 'ear me an' I 'ad to crawl up the stairsto 'im. Just as I got to the top a shrap burst, an' the bullets camesmashin' an' tearin' down thro' the tiles an' rafters. The bullets upthere was whistlin' an' whinin' past an' over like the wind in a ship'sriggin', an' every now an' then _whack!_ one would hit a tile, sendingthe dust an' splinters jumpin'. The F. O. Was crouched up in one cornerwhere a handful o' tiles was still clingin', an' he was peepin' outthrough these with 'is field glasses. "Keep down, " 'e sez when 'e sawme. "There's a brace o' blanky snipers been tryin' for a cold'alf-hour to bull's-eye on to me. There they go again----, " an' _crack. . . Smack_ two bullets comes, one knockin' another loose tile off, afoot over 'is 'ead, an' t'other puttin' a china ornament on themantel-piece on the casualty list. 

'I reported the wire cut an' the F. O. Sez he'd come along wi' me an'locate the break. "We'll have to hurry, " he says, "cos it looks to meas if a real fight was breezin' up. " So we crawled out along the ditchan' down the trench, followin' the wire. We found the break--there wasthree cuts--along that bit o' road that runs from the Rollin' RiverTrench down past the Bomb Store, an' I don't ever want a more highlyexcitin' job than we had mendin' it. The shells was fair rainin' downthat road, an' the air was just hummin' like a harpstring wi' bulletsan' rickos. [2] We joined up an' tapped in an' found we was through allright, so we hustled back to the Post. That 'ouse never was a real'ealth resort, but today it was suthin' wicked. They must 'avesuspicioned there was a Post there, an' they kep' on pastin' shells atus. How they missed us so often, Heaven an' that German gunner onlyknows. They couldn't get a direct with solid, but I must admit theymade goodish shootin' wi' shrapnel, an' they've made that 'ouse looklike a second-'and pepper-caster. The F. O. Was 'avin' a most unhappytime with shrapnel an' rifle bullets, but 'e 'ad 'is guns in action, so'e just 'ad to stick it out an' go on observin', till the wires was cutagain. This time the F. O. Sez to look back as far as the wire ran inthe trench, an' if I didn't find the break up to there come back an'report to 'im. But I found the break in the hedge jus' outside, an'mended it an' went back, the bullets still zipping down an' me breakin'all the hands-an'-knees records for the fifty yards. I found the F. O. 'ad reined back a bit from 'is corner an' was busy wi' the bedroompoker breakin' out a loophole through the bricks of the gable-end wall. 'E came down an' told the Major about it. It was getting too hot, 'esaid, an' the two snipers must 'ave 'im located wi' field-glasses. Onebullet 'ad nearly blinded 'im wi' broken-tile dust, an' another 'adtore a hole across the side of 'is "British warm"[3]; so he was goin'to try observin' through a couple of loopholes. Then 'e went up an'finished 'is chippin' an' brought the guns into action again. Just inthe middle o' a series I feels a most unholy crash, an' the whole houserocked on its toe an' heel. The brickdust an' plaster came rattlin'down, an' when the dust cleared a bit an' I got my sense an' myeyesight back, I could see a splintered hole in the far corner of myceilin'. I made sure the F. O. Upstairs was blotted out, 'cos it wasthat corner upstairs where 'is loophole was; but next minute 'e singsout an' asks was I all right. I never felt less all right in my life, but I told 'im I was still alive, far as knew. I crawled up to seewhat 'ad 'appened, an' there was 'im in one corner at 'is peep-'ole, an' the floor blowed to splinters behind 'im an' a big gap bust in thegable wall at the other corner. A shell had made a fair hit just abouton 'is one loophole, while he was lookin' thro' the other. "I believewe'll 'ave to leave this, " he sez, "an' move along to our other post. It's a pity, 'cos I can't see near as well. "

'"If we don't leave this 'ouse, sir, " I sez, "seems to me it'll leaveus--an' in ha'penny numbers at that. "

'So he reports to the Major, an' I packs up, an' we cleared. Theshelling had slacked off a bit, though the trenches was still slingin'lead hard as ever. 

'"We must hurry, " sez the F. O. "They're going to bombard a trench forten minutes at noon, and I must be in touch by then. "

'We scurried round to the other post, and just got fixed up before theshoot commenced. And in the middle of it--phutt goes first one wirean' then the other. The F. O. Said things out loud when I told him. "Come along, " he finished up; "we must mend it at once. The infantryassault a trench at the end of the ten minutes. There they go now, "and we heard the roar of the rifles swell up again. He took a longstare out through his glasses and then we doubled out. The Germs musthave thought there was a big assault on, and their gunners were puttinga zone of fire behind the trenches to stop supports coming up. An' wehad to go through that same zone, if you please. 'Strewth, it was hot. There was big shells an' little shells an' middle-sized shells, roarin'an' shrieking up and bursting H. E. Shrapnel or smashing into theground. If there was one threw dirt over us there was a dozen. Onebuzzed close past and burst about twenty feet in front of the F. O. , andeither the windage or the explosion lifted him off his feet and cleanrolled him over. I thought he was a goner again, but when I came up tohim he was picking himself up, an' spittin' dirt an' language outbetween his teeth, an' none the worse except for the shakin'. Wecouldn't find that break. We had to tap in all along the wire tolocate it and all the time it was a race between us finding the breakand a shell finding us. At last we got it, where we'd run the wireover a broke-up shed. The F. O. Was burnin' to talk to the Battery, knowing they'd be anxious about their shoot, so he picked a spot in thelee of a wall an' told me to tap in on the wire there. Just as hebegan talkin' to the Battery a Coal-Box soars up an' bumps down abouttwenty yards away and beyond us. The F. O. Looks up, but goes ontalkin'; but when another shell, an' then another, drops almost on theexact same spot, he lifted the 'phone closer in to the wall and stoopswell down to it. I needn't tell you I was down as close to the groundas I could get without digging. "I think we're all right here, " sezthe F. O. , when another shell bust right on the old spot an' thesplinters went singin' over us. "They look like keepin' on the samespot, and we must be out of the line the splinters take. "

'It looked like he was right, for about three more fell withouttouchin' us, and I was feeling a shade easier in my mind. There wassome infantry comin' up on their way to the support trenches, an' theyfiled along by the wall that was coverin' us. Just as they was passin'another shell dropped. It was on the same spot as all the others, butblow me if it didn't get three of them infantry. They fell squirmin'right on top o' us an' the instrument, so I concluded that spot wasn'tas safe as the F. O. Had reckoned, an' there was a flaw in 'is argumentsomewheres that the Coal-Box 'ad found out. The F. O. Saw that too, an'we shifted out quick-time. After that things quietened down a bit, an'the short hairs on the back o' my neck had time to lie down. Theystood on end again once or twice in the afternoon, when we'd some morerepairin' under fire to do; an' then to wind up the day they turned amaxim on just as we was comin' away from the post, an' we had to flopon our faces with the bullets zizz-izz-ipping just over us. We took atrench, I hear; an' the Jocks in front of us had thirty casualties, andthe Guards on our left 'ad some more, 'cos I seed 'em comin' back tothe ambulance. 

'On the 'ole, it's been about the most unpleasantest day I've spent fora spell. What wi' wadin' to the knees in the trench mud, gettingsoaked through wi' rain, not 'aving a decent meal all day, crawlin'about in mud an' muck, an' gettin' chivvied an' chased all over thelandscape wi' shells an' shrapnel an' machine-guns an' rifles, I'vejust about 'ad enough o' this King an' Country game. '

The Signaller paused a moment. But his gaze fell on the letter hestill held in his hand, and he tapped it with a scornful finger andburst out again violently: 'King an' Country--huh! An' a bald-'eadedblighter sittin' warm an' dry an' comfortable by 'is fireside at 'omewrites out an' tells me what the Country's thinkin'. I come in 'ereafter a day that's enough to turn the 'air of a 'earse-'orse grey, an'I'm told about my pals bein' casualtied; an' to top it all I gets aletter from 'ome--"why don't you do somethin'? Why don't you get upan' go for 'em?" Ar-r-rh!!'

''Ome, ' remarked the Limber Gunner. ''Ome don't know nuthin' about it. '

'They don't, ' agreed the Signaller. 'But what I wants to know--an'there's a many 'ere like me--is why don't somebody let 'em know aboutit; let 'em really know. '

[1] Disconnected. 

[2] Ricochets. 

[3] Overcoat.