¹⁸ The God of Battles, who had made Twenty-one, himself turned aside from it and held his nose. Trench Twenty-one was an abomination and an eyesore of struggling humanity; such a medley of four smells of men, both quick and dead, of ancient water fouled by both, that it cried out aloud to a heaven which merely opened up and added more water. it was an inextricable tangle of dead and living men flung together into this mold, which made them for the nonce, one.

It lay a the tip of the St. Eloi salient in that wet February of 1915, the right-hand side of the apex dominated by the long low-lying Hollebeke Ridge. Two hundred yards to the right there lay what we named, in our simple soldier fashion The Mound; "The Mound of Death" a fervid press called it. It had been the graveyard of a score of regiments.

Ours, the Mad Brigade, the Eightieth, was holding the salient, which was but a projection on the larger one of Ypres. The five regiments relieved one another, each in its turn. During our occupation it had changed hands thrice, though never while the Patricias had been in occupation. Such was its admixture of dead French, Germans, and of all the races of the British Isles and the Dominions beyond the seas, that it had achieved dubious fame as the International Trench. For the matter of that, the entire region was one vast cemetery.

The Princess Pats Stretcher Bearers - Formerly the Scotch Pipers

 

In the International Trench

The main German trench faced and paralleled it some fifty-odd yards away. Their sap was more dangerous. Profiting by recent events, our friend, the enemy, had dug by night and by day. They had relieved one another at the tunnel-like breast until now its sinuous length menacingly paralleled out Twenty-one, a bare twenty yards distant. it was the vital spot, the throat of the two armies, each of which clung t it with an inexorable pressure that never faltered. The British giant lay sprawled in exhaustion, stubbornly fending off those clutching fingers that so ferociously clawed at his seat of life. Individual stubbornness of regiment and man prevented either from recognizing the sure sings of approaching dissolution. That only!

The incessant hand-to-hand struggles of infantry that had been flung desperately at one another in attack and vicious counterattack, and the incessant close-up hammering of opposing artillery, had so battered and torn the one-time trench as to reduce it to something hat had all the properties of an open ditch, provided always that the ditch in question was the stagnant outlet of viscous sewer. It was apparently untenable, but was in reality long enough to afford, under the pressure of our direst need, the pretense of shelter to scant fifty men. As a result of a belligerent activity, which allowed no opportunity for repairs, it was broad enough to afford liberal passage for a wagon, had one been there. Its depth had been filled in by the sloughed-in mud from each wall, a process which had been aided alike by the elements and the steamshovel-like quality of the frequent intensive bombardments, which were technically known as "preparation for infantry attack"; so that now its depth scarcely exceeded a foot in any place. And even that was level-full of a putrid liquid that was neither mud nor honest water, but which, in perverse recompense, exuded such an odor as may be found only in upturned cemeteries. The victims of artillery fever could so testify at such times as they buried their olfactory organs in ti, which happened whenever that extremely active arm of the forces here engaged indulged in the process known as tickling the trenches; in other words, shoot at each other's infantry.

A flimsy parapet, as ragged as a crosscut saw, gave doubtful shelter to a flattened man, or, in rare spots that seemed by comparison a haven of refuge, a place where one might scrunch down in a sitting posture. But even there the hard-hitting Mausers of the enemy had so gutted the mud-filled sandbags as to make them only a poor screen, which hid without protecting, and which was of no avail against the mushroom bullets of the heavier elephant guns of the Germans. And this might be relied upon to maintain itself incessantly for the twelve hours of the night and sporadically throughout the day.

From the secure shelter of the more distant Hollebeke, old Fritz amused himself during every hour of the twenty-four by pouring from machine gun and rifle murderous volleys into our unprotected rear; efforts which were, in turn linked together by the unwearied efforts of his snipers.

Our lads lay on the dead - Saxon and Celt, Pict and Scot, French and German; every turn of hand or foot disturbed some one of them. The Canadians were still warm; the others disintegrating. here the square had of a Prussian, the back of which made a straight line up from a bull-like neck that was unrelieved by any line of gray matter behind the ears, rose in solemn gravity from the fetid slime; there the heavy steel-shod ammunition boots of a Tommy bloomed from this garden, submerged from the ankles to the head he stood on.

We had at least the doubtful consolation of thinking that the poor, dear Boches opposite suffered in proportion, up to their waists in mud and mufflers, as we were. later, even that small grain of comfort was denied us.

There was no grousing. That belonged to the softer days of camp and the future ones of "cooshie" billets, of which it was so integral a part. There were no loopholes. Fritz had a patent on them. We fired over the top - when he would permit, or at other times when some one of us fell a prey to trench rabies.

And of braziers or any other pretense of fire there was, of course, none.

There was no man so foolish as not to know he should be hit. it was merely a case of "When? Where? and How?" And; "Well, if Bertha's got my number I'll stop one; if not, not!' - an inelegant reference to the ledger which, according to our best trench authorities, the owner of the Krupp Works kept. None felt shame at admitting they ardently longed for the day when they should receive their Blighty. That and "My nerves!" were never-failing subjects of discussion in billets. Never here.

Making the Best of It

But sworn comrades quarreled over the flimsiest of trench affairs - the shifting of a leg, or the filling, on one's knees, of a sandbag. And trench nerves were never very far in the offing. In the worst, the rare cases, this might mean mutilation of self in hand or foot; anything to get out of this and rest, rest, rest! Each day was packed so full of abnormal incident that it had become the commonplace, and memories of a really normal past became weird in their abnormality. yet the man who talked the loudest of his nerves ended all discussion by saying; "Well, we're in for it; so dry up! If you're goin' to be a soldier be one!"and then struck up, from his particular section of that open grave:

Then, as now, the Big Push mirage loomed strongly on the horizon, just ahead, and buoyed up all those who needed its foolish comfort for the day when we should "get our own back." In the interval of waiting each made for himself what scant comfort he might, the better to fit himself for shooting of Germans, which, after all was said and done, was what we were her for, the raison d'etere and end of all. It became as commonplace as the shooting of crows and caused much less compunction, though it was infinitely more exciting. This was our creed: to "do in" as many of Old Fritz as we possibly could before we stopped "ours". A man who had served in Africa, and had shot big game there, smacked his lips: "They're the biggest game of all - men!"

Todeschi was a new draft man. He came running in on the relief and flung himself down. It was just after second shell time, when all were betwixt a sweat and a chill to know whether the last bombardment presaged an infantry attack or whether it was merely a strafe. We were listening in proportion to our fears. Todeschi struggled to make himself more comfortable. The man nearest kicked him violently on the shins. "Lie still; you're rockin' the boat! Whatcha think this is - a bleedin' tea party?"

Todeschi was a child of emotions, as befitted his Rumanian-French parentage; a lilting nightingale who had ¹⁹ made our last billets joyous with the spontaneity of his bursting song; an artist to the soul of him. he did not sing here. This was his first trench.

Stamboro - a Princess Pat

Or perhaps it was an off day with the mail, so that the poor abused trench dwellers had to fall back upon a game of cards, unless the warmth of the sun had driven them into their commodious dugouts. These, of course, in the brief intervals between victorious charges on corpulent and bespectacled professors and anemic Soho waiters. It was the next time out and after a night's sleep. The commanding officer came to him, wearing that incomparable smile which had once caused an observing private to remark: "By damn, by the colonel's face you can't tell whether he's laughin' or cryin'!" He rubbed his hands as always when he pleased. "Well, Todeschi, and how did you like Twenty-one! Nice trench, wasn't it?" Todeschi gazed reproachfully at him, his soul in his eyes: "Oh! -" Mulligan was another of the draft men. Already his fondness for the comforts of his body had earned him that sobriquet of what was to us the chiefest of them. he cast a disapproving eye about him: "Ell and 'igh water!" Such was his disgust that he refused to take his pack off, and lay down on his back in the water in full marching order, with his face turned hopelessly to the rain, while the projecting portions of his equipment sank deeper in the much beneath. The appearance of daylight inspired him to rise. Easier said than done. It required the blasphemous efforts of an entire section. The water was not thin enough to pour off him; it slipped - in gobs. His pack, haversack and water bottle were merely rough projections.

Mulligan's Unmolested March

With a muttered oath he flung desperately out the rear. "Strike me if I'll stay 'ere! Not 'awf!" He walked deliberately out on the forbidden stretch of road, which even under cover of darkness was beyond the pale, so well was it commanded by machine guns of the enemy.

"Blimey! If Ol' Mulligan ain't goine an' bloody well awsked for it!" And others: "Well, Gawd love a p'liceman! 'E don't awf think the Allemongs got the wind up their bloody selves. Not 'im! No fear." "et a bleedin' German kiss, 'e will!" "Serve 'im bloomin' well right oo!" "Well, strike me pink if they ain't bloody well goin' to let 'im swank aw'y wiv it!"

Mulligan, in fact, had lost his earlier air of dejection and was beginning to take a sinful pride in is unfortunate condition. he was marching in gloomy grandeur up and down the narrow strip of road which intersected both sets of trenches at this point, doing a right-about turn each time he reached the point in it opposite Twenty-one, and repeating that performance just before he came to the shelter of the hedge at the upper end. He would not look otherwise than straight ahead and affected to see nothing; but from the tail of his eye he could see the wonderment his cool effrontery had occasioned, and was not displeased. And with half an eye he could as easily have seen the white patches at the loopholes opposite that betokened the watchful eyes of Fritz.

Once he stopped to beat his mud-caked arms about his beast, as a teamster might on a December morning in Manitoba. It was a full hour before he returned, cursing the Germans and all their works; saying that they, too were in this plot against a British soldier man, so that they would not even shoot him! So this was Twenty-one and these its alternatives!

By night we lay on our stomachs, as it was then that the fire was worst; by day on our backs, unless the rain came in too steady a downpour. The luckier ones sat, but very guardedly. This reversal of position had at least the virtue of lending variety to the view. At our feet there stretched the wide-packed cemetery peculiar to the region, and from portions of which the bodies protruded, owing either to the haste with which they had been interred or to their later disruption by shellfire. Mostly they were French, and from them there flowered small pine crosses on which sadly hung vacant chapeaux, sometimes bullet-riddled. Each cross bore the name, the class and age of the silent one; sometimes a bit of trenchant phrasing: Pro Patria! Vive la France! but never the name of the regiment.

Even here their native art thrived lustily. The irregular outline of each grave was marked out by bits of broken bottles or ragged ration tins. The more pretentious sported a sodden bunch of flowers, or perhaps some rough floral design, outlined with sticks and stones on the receptive canvas of the mud by tender poilu hands. The name and number, with a simple R.I.P., served for the crosses of the less imaginative British.

 Shelley Farm

Farther on the ground sloped sharply to a five-yard rise in a distance of some fifty yards, to the slender hedge that formed the base of the St. Eloi triangle. The hedge intersected the lines of Number Nineteen and Number Twenty where they violently hugged the Mound of Death, and Number Twenty-two, on the other side, where it lay between Twenty-one and that vicious Hollebeke. it was over this highly exposed stretch of ground that the relief which each night brought must dash. Between us and the hedge there stretched a vista of crisscrossed and mocking communications trenches, which probably never were, except on some coldly executed headquarters map. Actually they served merely to wed the slimy water of one stagnant Johnson pool to another. And, as always, the inevitable crosses of the nations dotted the entire expanse.

Rupert Brook thought for us all:

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares; Washed marvelously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset and the colors of the earth. These had seen movement and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

Near the intersection of the hedge with Twenty-two, the Gap gave up a narrow slot of light amid the dark mass of the hedge. Here a dead Frenchman lay, as he had lain, so the wiser ones averred, since Agincourt. On the other side we could barely glimpse the corner of the tumbling ruin of Shelley Farm, that place of many memories; an obvious name and well earned. We could make out the mournful mooing of a cow from where she had for so long hung hopelessly over her calf, except at such times as a salvo from the guns sent her careening wildly over the slippery fields, only to return stubbornly in a quieter interval to stare in puzzled wonder at the bloated carcass of her offspring.

In front there was less than we could see - because, in fact, so much. Twenty yards away that other world carried on. We could plainly hear the splashing of the mud as it left the shovel of the sapper on shift at the ^{20 breast} of that steadily advancing and menacing sap. The cough of the pump was constant. Occasionally there were voices. Certainly there was no fraternization.

The scant No Man's Land between could only be seen in the rare intervals of quietness by dint of great shifting of bodies and bags. The wire lay so close between that it was impossible to distinguish ours from theirs. here and there a gap in it relieved its threatening monotony. Danglin on the barbs and lying on the mud beneath were the empty tins of Maconchie rations, the endless plum and apple, and the stringy bully beef, which together with their German equivalents, thus constituted a regular and bell-like portion of the defense against surprise attacks.

On the wire the swollen bodies of black-faced men - grotesque, spiderlike - fraternized at last. In the night a stray something struck the only substantial portion of the neck of one of them, so that its head fell off and the morning found it gazing reproachfully up at the late owner.

And beyond that, vision ceased at the sturdy parapet of the German sap, the white expanse of which was here and there relieved by the threatening inkiness of a loophole, from which, as like as not, the barrel of a rifle protruded. As for us, we shot, for the most part, desperately over the top, which at least gave us this advantage, that we could always maintain fixed bayonets with which to repel boarders; something that the use of loopholes precluded as likely to prevent a rapid withdrawal when the rifle should be needed in a hurry.

To watch the blackness of the loophole for the momentary whiteness that meant an observing Fritz offered our only chance of a hit; except, of course, at night, when we might do snapshooting at the flash of rifle fire. here and there the blue coats and red pants of departed poilus, derisively converted by a deft soldiery into sandbags, silently pointed the warning finger of Fate at us - that is, if we had been amenable to such logic; the fact being that we found them most convenient bull's-eyes.

A Street Scene in West Outre - Where the Princess Pats were billeted

 The Give and Take of War

We had bailers - those foolish soup bowls from which the long and awkward handle projected vertically at the most inconvenient angle, so that it was a juggling feat of the highest order to reach the parapet with half of the miserable two gallons one started with. We occasionally used them to advantage in the worst places by removing the sticks and, by a judgment so nice as to have shamed a quick-lunch waiter, reached the top of the parapet, where if it were night, we solicitously dumped the contents over on the German side of the fence, from which it as certainly leaked back on us and, like as not, undermined our parapet into the bargain.

The splash promptly drew forth a smart rifle fire at the spot, which, however much we cowered, frequently penetrated the sievelike parapet with the usual result: "Ol' Bill's got his R.I.P."

By way of variety a school of stars shells might go up the better to direct the lashing spray of a machine gun, which taught us to keep our hands idle and our heads down. The flares streaked up in the paraboly of a Safety-First Fourth of July rocket, which broke into a fizzing sputter on its graceful downward turn. It was merely decorative if it broke in front, but highly illuminative if it burst in the rear, where it threw the ragged outline of our surroundings in strong silhouette for those unfriendly German eyes; so that their machine gunfire sliced like a sword at the top of our abortion of a parapet., combing it, and so further weakening it that reports became doubly dangerous. Under such conditions all but the most desperate breaches went unheeded. The sound of a sack stealthily flopped into such a place drew forth showers of bombs that invariably left a cruel aftermath of wounded.

With the bombs there came out of the night derisive laughter, taunts and gibes. our men looked at one another and growled, deep from their empty stomachs, strange oaths that were flung out in so cautious a growl as to render them the more terrible in their unspoken threat; while we crawled in Indian caution, our bellies dragging in the mud; rifle and bayonet in one hand, first-aid package in the other to give succor.

Of these eight Princess Pats - All have been casualties except one man.

We too, asked for bombs, and received the next night a pitiful dozen of our homemade plum and apple tins, packed full of all kinds of army hardware. And so, the next time we bailed, we, too, laughed derisively. And when someone, shouted: "Nar them! Put a little 'ate inter 'er! we chanted: "Keep your head down, Allemand. If you want to see your Fatherland Keep your head down, Allemand!" And under our breath we damned them heartily as we twisted the button and counted slowly - "One - Two - Three - Four" - and heaved together; so that at the stroke of "Five" we hoped Fritz would not have time to wonder what had happened to him. But those pots were made for jam and not for this; our hopes were vain, particularly if, as happened here, someone found his bomb too heavy and so let go too soon, in which case it came back and exploded among us where we huddled, while the rotten parapet shook.

The toll our offensive probably took was as nothing to the steel shower that found us, for hours afterward, smothered in it like rats in a trap, in payment for the impudence that was so foolishly unsupported by a larger supply of jam pots. With such a warning, we too watched for opportunities, and flung back, before they burst, sundry German bombs. However, we sat in the mud and took it; bound up our wounds, shifted our dead, and sullenly cleaned from our rifles the mud each fresh outburst threw over them. They had our number, but not our goat.

The trench mortar was very bad. it came so silently and sprang by so closely from its medieval catapult that we could sometimes dimly see the unwieldily missile as it hurtled clumsily through the air, before it burst with all the ardor of a small mine and sent up the greasy column of an oil well, which rose inkily for five score feet before it recoiled on us in a shower of trench debris and odd limbs of men. Always, of course, there was the desultory fire of hidden batteries, which was answered in part by the snap of our seventy-fives in the wood beyond Kruistraat Hulk.

Under these circumstances the tale of our casualties grew day by day, and steadily held, each twenty-four hours, to sixty per cent of the men we took over at the dusk of each night from a huddled group of half delirious and wholly sodden, stupid, staring men, who clutched feebly at their rifles and cried loudly, in the name of God, for rum and rest.

And each night, at each fresh alarm, that gallant gentleman of the strained and haggard face came among his men to inspire them with the freshness of his own high courage. Like all others, he had aged years in weeks. His ever-ready smile bespoke the girl heart, which thrived despite a lifetime of soldier training; and in the last analysis he was a man of parts. It was at those worst moments that he came, the quickest at the bidding of an orderly's appeal, crashing through the gap, half blind from old wounds, falling into stinking water holes and out again, to fling his slender length among his men, radiating such a store of cheer and artful badinage, combined with the most tender solicitude, as to uplift the dullest of them and feed anew the fighting fire of each. So not once but many times men swore mightily and registered this oath: That Francis Farquhar could have his heart's best blood!

Each wound tore freshly at the raw wound in his heart. At each blasting burst that tore its way through flesh and blood, he muttered through his teeth: "The swine!" And so he stayed until perhaps some other breathless runner stormed in with a tale of worse than this befalling down the line. It was then that the maternal quality of the perfect officer welled up in the great heart of the man: "Good night, my children!" He faded off amid the graves and mist.

And if not he, then it was his other self, the second in command, the regimental and official angel, n'ee Major Hamilton Gault, who had fathered us, and of whom his senior had but lately said to the general officer commanding: "I give you my word - the man fairly chills my blood!" Not scorning danger, but rather, like Nelson, failing to recognize it, he toyed with death in all its ugliest phases, taking it into his slim hands and dissecting it as might a curious child the internal arrangement of a clock. He was, I think, happiest in the neck-deep water of a gloriously muddy trench, subsisting on the scantiest rations of those about, the unquenchable fire of his spirit scorning every weakness of an unusually frail body.

That trench was the instrument which drove home into the heart of the soldier the consciousness of the great wrong that had been done the race by the thing that had bred this, and the conviction that it must never be permitted to happen again. Withal, there was such quickening of the soul as to melt the tough bone of thought in the dullest mind, and so to give the conscious thought a rebirth that reacted in a twisting of all old impulses. it became so that there was no human relationship, however sweet, however dear, which did not, beside this one here experienced, fade into distant nothingness. The regiment displaced all our other loves. It became a glorious symposium of father, mother and sweetheart; gave, asked and received our dying all. These men, who fought, cooked and died together, came to assume to one another a certain rough tenderness of affectionate disgust that replaced for each his more domestic love, which he had now, in his heart of hearts, half forsworn and perhaps wholly forgotten.

 The Idol of the Princess Pats

All our old affections were of that remote, that far-off and shadowy world where men and women pursued all those quiet domestic avocations of a tranquil life which could by no strange whimsy have aught to do with this, even in recollection. And if there were no other reason it would be weakness to dally with the soft danger of the thought. And that this other world could so exist by the side of this one seemed strange indeed to us, whose hearts were daily and hourly crucified by the painful deaths of our newer loves. Each fresh loss so ate into our hearts and vitals as to make living painful and death welcome, searing the soul. And so those others back home, whom we had once known, became indeed very far off, and were so relegated to those distant regions of our hearts that little cares or thoughts of them might not by any chance conflict with our thought of or our duty to our all-mother - the regiment.

And so, when some of them back home in Britain and in America told us of their aims for peace, our hearts were filled with a great rage that we should be so misunderstood. For why did we suffer this if not to end it for all time? And peace now would not do that.

"We beat you at the Marne;
We beat you at the Asine;
We gave you hell at Neuve Chapelle;
And here we are again!"

The rain was pitiless and so constant. We looked in vain for a sun that never shone. 32 The mist that forever closed in on us like a cloak nervously multiplied our foes. The situation contained elements of a great danger, one that struck deeper than the mere losing of lives. it concerned the honor of the regiment. if permitted to run unchecked it might so suck the vitality as to endanger the morale not only of a regiment but of a brigade. The place had become a nightmare; so foul an ulcer that it was daily sapping away the foundations upon which our usefulness as a fighting unit depended. it required, above all, the surgeon's knife in strong hands that would strike deep and spare not at the spurt of blood or the wince of pain. And, besides, Pat's Pets had yet to be blooded.

Though we had for two months, in this small and vicious salient of St. Eloi, suffered cruelly at the hands of both Fate and the Germans, we had as yet failed to come breast to breast with the latter. And yet from the two miles of crescent-shaped trenches enveloping us there was poured in for twelve hours every night so destructive a fire from these three fronts that life in the morning seemed a miracle indeed.

Donald Ross was corporal of the Snipers, of whom General Plumer, the general officer commanding our army corps, had said: "They have pulled their weight." None so keen as Ross on desperate trips out in front, on bombing, scouting and listening-post jobs. The little man brooded and bided his time, awaiting the day when he should go over the top with the boys. he yearned for a charge -

There were days in Snipers' Cellar between nights of parlous venture; nights punctuated by gusts of high-explosive fire overhead during which, as he cleaned his rifle, Corporal Ross crooned softly to himself certain bits of the wild and half-forgotten folk songs of his people. it was then we knew his Highland blood to be off, skirling and leaping, crying for its own. And only when the word leaked out that this was to be the night did he cease his somber brooding, laugh like his old self, and become again the man we had known before death had claimed so many of our mates and so embittered all living. he bubbled over with the enthusiasm of preparation; with that holy desire of a bride going to her lord, whom she had so long and so ardently longed for. Exaltation shone from his eye. he was very happy.

White Horse Cellars lay beneath the naked and tumbling ruin of the one-time inn of that name on the Ypres road, which split the village of St. Eloi in twain. The shattered walls, the naked rafters, the wine that soiled the huddled heap of a woman's undergarment, all reeked of the disaster that had so swiftly overtaken the place what time the nuns from the convent had come screaming down the road.

  Ticklish Business

The young giant, Coquhoun, the officer commanding the Snipers, filled the narrow stair as he came with the second in command, crouching down the wet steps in the dusk, with Ross at their heels. he plowed through the flooded passageway, beside which the signalers sat on their boxes, with their heels drawn up to avoid the water, exchanging unedited remarks with their equally unhappy ones in the trenches on our Front. he drew himself as nearly erect as the arching lowness of the stone roof would permit and gave to his commanding officer the masterful salute of a mastiff in leash. he waited respectfully while the other gave to him and the second in command certain instructions covering the reconnaissance the two were about to make in the territory fronting on Twenty-one.

"And on no account must you go beyond the road" - referring to the upper end of the one the cellar fronted on which Mulligan had sought to end his troubles in the promenade. Both officers saluted. Their commanding officer smiled and added: "And please don't let them scupper you."

Taking Ross with them, they proceeded silently along the road to the Breastworks, a fence of sandbags that constituted a secondary line of defense, which roughly paralleled the entire system of trenches stretching from the Mound to Twenty-two. They reached Frenchman Gap and made the usual heartbreaking dash down the slope, through the precautionary fire the Germans poured in the area with methodical persistence during all hours of darkness. They lay down for a moment's breathing in Twenty-one.

Ross pleaded hard to go along. "C.O.'s orders, Corporal Ross," said is officer; which ended that. he instructed Ross to return to Snipers' Cellar and there await his return and that of the other snipers, who were as yet scattered about at their task of preparing their sniping posts for the next day's work.

"Corporal Ross!"

"Yes Sir."

"If I don't come back by two o'clock you can figure I won't be back; but whatever you do, don't risk yourself or any of the other boys by looking for me. Remember!"

"Very Good Sir"

The word was passed along the mud: "Reconnoitering party out in front. Withhold all fire. Pass it on to the next man." The two officers slid cautiously through a gap in the parapet and merged into nothingness in the mist. Ross listened attentively for a few minutes to catch the sound of any pronounced activity that might indicate disaster. Satisfied that all was well, he floundered up the hill, through the hedge, and so on over to Sniper's Cellar. There he dropped on his hands and knees and made a rabbit like dive that slid him down a mass of shell-broken rubble to the unreceptive flagstones of the cellar.

 Ruggles at the Front

Swearing softly, he began to feel blindly about, and, of course, rubbed his freshly skinned hands against every jagged bully beef tin, the wasted ammunition of three nations, and all the other varied rubbish of a careless soldiery, before his fingers closed on what he sought - the rough burlap of some split sandbags. he waited until an accommodating German star shell lit up the warren like entrance before he carefully hung the curtain up in such manner that at each joint it overlapped. He extracted a muddy candle end from his haversack and held it so that a few hot globules dropped on the American sewing machine which constituted the chief ornament of the cellar. he thrust one end of the candle into the hot mass and held it for a moment while the latter congealed.

Then he glanced overhead at the fantastic bundles of drying lentils, kicked to one side the well-picked ribs of a horse that former German occupants had left, pushed up a larger hump of the rotted straw convenient to the candle, dragged a much folded periodical from the omnipotent haversack, and, with a deep sigh of content, settled himself back luxuriously on his ill smelling pillow for perusal of such portions of Ruggles of Red Gap as the travels of the night had not utterly befouled. Ross Donald; Number 148 Corporal, Snipers: Headquarters Company, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was at home.

The snipers began to wander in by ones and twos. Each time they gave a low voiced warning; Ross whispered "Wait!" and hid the candle in the hollow of his arm, well under his opened tunic.

"What's up? they demanded. "Is that estaminet yarn the goods? Are we for it?"

"Surest thing you know!" said Ross, without glancing up from Ruggles' dilemma of the moment. The others waited. "We shall attack at four," he intoned evenly without lifting his eyes.

"Huh!"

No other comment was made. There was, however, the negative one of a noticeable falling off in the grousing attendant upon the giving up of snug sniping positions, which had perhaps been rendered tenable only after great labor. The silence was broken only by a rustle of paper as last letters were written and the loud such of pull-throughs as they popped out of fouled rifle barrels; each man was busy with his own thoughts.

Green and Dave Logan were the last to come and the loudest in their criticism of a "crush" that thus rudely tore them from the perfectly beautiful chimney they had so luckily found, and which, by the removal of a brick, had given them so hawk like a view of the unsuspecting Germans beneath. Their work could not now have the breath of life - or death. Theirs was the indignation of the true artist. it swept over them in a flood of vituperative condemnation that, with true soldier impartiality, embraced everyone within their ken, from Field Marshal Lord French to that quartermaster sergeant of Headquarters Company who had done them again on that night's ration of rum. Of the two, the sergeant received much the soundest verbal trouncing. Lord French was merely sending them to their death.

Then they, too, proceeded to make ready. They discarded their cumbersome kits, even the small haversack at the side; retaining only the water bottle and entrenching tool, which hung from the web straps of their light marching order. They stuffed the three-deep row of pouches on the breast full of ammunition, three clips of five cartridges in each pouch, so that the straps bit sharply into their shoulders with the accumulated weight of two hundred and forty of them. Then, for good measure, they threw an extra bandoleer over each shoulder, and as a finishing touch carefully cleaned their tunic pockets and placed in them loose cartridges without the clip. And when everything else had been done each man of his own hard knowledge ran the pull-through once more through his rifle, wiped the bolt, and tested it again before packing the magazine with its load of two full clips.

It was long past two o'clock and still there was no sign of their officer. Logan and Green sat aloof in the darkness of the farther corner. They were mates, which meant that, though they might rarely abuse each other, they would permit no one else to do so. "My mate!" It meant that they cooked and fought together, the two essentials of existence here. it meant that separated they were a doubtful quantity, but that together they presented such a front as to shame all saga history; so complete, on the one side, was the self-abnegation of their fiercely maternal solicitude for each other, and so fierce, on the other, the granitlike quality of their seasoned courage.

  In White Horse Cellar

 The Gaelic Logan brooded, "I'm going to get mine to-night. Here!" he said, touching the region of his heart and laughing softly to himself. Green stared, curiously embarrassed by such a display from so taciturn a man. "I feel it in my bones, matey." And throughout the remainder of the watch he harked back to it. he repeated half to himself, from the Rubaiyat of a Man at Arms, those lines of the Pats' own soldier poet, the young Sergeant Brown:

In White Horse Cellar the commanding officer was anxiously inquiring of the sentry, who hugged the wall upstairs, for news of his two officers. There was none. he looked serious. he had just returned from one of his periodical tours of the battalion frontage. As he slipped down the wet stairs he heard the tired signalers expostulating with the unseen owners of interrupting voices, who sought to monopolize the overworked wire. They voiced their complaint in words politic and suave, or violently the reverse, according to the surmisable rank of the other. Sometimes, by simulating a pardonable ignorance of his rank, they got their on back for some remembered wrong by indulging in all the raw satire of a drill sergeant, until an indignant officer's voice called a halt while the grinning signaler apologized in profuse lies for the success of his well-planned error.

Guides and orderlies passed in and out, each with the same old story, in some new form, of this trench hit with a trench mortar; that one flooded; a working party fired on - and so on ad infinitum. The commanding officer sat on a biscuit tin, his head bowed on the one table the place boasted, unconscious of the water that lapped his ankles, the tired outline of his figure etched in the glow of the brazier, over which his servant Jarvis busied himself at the perennial tea-making.

"Sergeant Stewart, you might see if you can raise Twenty-three A, and ask them to send someone over to Twenty-one to see if anyone has returned."

"Very good, sir."

There followed a brief interval of waiting and more wordy argument while the tired sergeant explained in sarcastic detail that he did not want to gossip with a friend, but did have an important message to get through. A longer wait and then the insistent clack of the instrument and the sergeant's voice:

"Nothing to report from Twenty-one, sir."

"Thank you, Sergeant Stewart."

The commanding officer pondered; "Had they been killed or merely captured? And in either case had they, however innocently, disclosed the plans for the night? A wounded man might so rave, unconscious of his listeners. It had been known. There was the case of poor Sir Mortimer. 'To be or not to be?'" So must have run his thoughts, He sighed.

He scribbled a brief note and called to his orderly: "Take this to Mr. Crabbe, the O.C. Number Two Company in the supports. Quickly, please!"

Another street scene in West Outre

 

Challenged and Passed

Another pinwheel salute: "Yes, sir." And the orderly could be heard cursing his way up the dark stairs. his way led off across the fields to Voormezeele road, where besides the ruins of Bus House, a Tottenham-Court-Road bus sprawled ridiculously on its back, with its heels in the air, pawing like the dead horse beside it. h turned at this landmark, and his feet finding the firmer footing of the road broke into the longer swinging walk of a mountaineer.

He came to grief a moment later in the wreckage of a baby's carriage that lay across the cobbled road, and so tripped him headforemost into a newly made shell hole that his previous knowledge of the trail had not included. From out the already half-filled water hole, there broke across the steady whine of expiring ricochets such unedited invective as only the western half of North America produces.

In the swamp on the outskirts of Voormezeele there came the rapid fire of:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

And as quickly in the sawlike nasal came an overeager answer:

"Frand!"

"Advance, one, and be recognized!"

The orderly did so.

"Who are you?"

"P.P."

The proper regimental name was too big a mouthful on so dark a night in front of so nervous a sentry. It simply was not done. The sentry scrutinized him:

"Pass friend, and all's well."

These more formal amenities of the trench etiquette having been disposed of, the sentry dropped his rifle to "At Ease!"

"Whatcha want?"

"The O.C."

"Sleep in 's dugout. What's up?"

The orderly chanted over his shoulder the words of a popular regimental air:

"To-night th-ere will be - dirty work."

"Where"

 "At the crossroads, you rummy; just as the song says."

"At Twenty-one?"

The orderly nodded.

... "Are we for it?"

"Just up to the neck. That's all!" At which the sentry fell silent and gazed profoundly into the night in the general direction of the now retreating orderly, from whom the cautious hum of the last words of the Toreador swelled up in all the perfect crescendo of a flouted passion:

³⁴ There came the smashing finale, in which the sentry unconsciously joined, so truly did it follow the tenor of his thought:

"To-night - There will be Dirty work!
Dirty work!
Dirty work!"

And the sentry added succinctly and philosophically, with all the fatalism of his kind:

"Well, if we're for it we're for it."

A drowsy officer's servant came to the hole that served as a door and pushed aside the sacking.

"Mr. Crabbe's dug out?"

The servant cautioned silence, and in that peculiar abuse of the first person plural known only to his breed, the creature replied:

"we're 'aving a doss in there myte. I fink 'e's bloomin' well fed up wiv blokes a-knockin' 'im up all hours w'en 'e's tryin' to get 'is bleedin' kip. Why, Gawd love a p'liceman, we ---"

The orderly passed him the note.

"Well, if he isn't fed up this'll give him a six-Course dinner to chew on. Slip it along to your officer pronto, old-timer. It's from the C.O."

Oh! Blimey! Why didn't you bleedin' well say so? Let's 'ave it, matey."

The O.C. Number Two stood revealed, knocking the mud and straw from his hair. The causalities of all superiors had placed him, a subaltern, in charge of a company that had fallen to barely fifty men from its original strength of two hundred and fifty.

"My compliments to the commanding officer, orderly, and tell him I'll be at the rendezvous with my company at a quarter to four."

"Very, good, sir."

"Well, strike me pink!"

The curtain fell into place behind the servant.

At the White Horse Cellar the commanding officer made a brave attempt to cover his anxiety. He and the adjutant stared at each other, saying nothing. The latter had just return from a tour of the trenches. The efficiency, of which he made a god, demanded that. He out-Prussianed the Prussians in executive thoroughness, and, withal, was so hard on none as on himself. They heard a challenge up stairs, and both rose to their feet as the pale face of the second in command loomed in the doorway.

"Yes?" And both looked eagerly at him.

Pontius Pilate's Bodyguards

The two reconnoitering officers had crawled a short distance together and then had gone their separate ways to make what observations they might. At the boundary line of the road, and following previous instruction, the one had crawled along the edge of German territory listening . At the end he had penetrated some yards behind the sap and so obtained a fair idea of the supporting strength. Returning at the appointed time he had waited long for his companion, and at last chanced detection by a reconnaissance of the latter's territory in hopes of at least discovering his body, but without avail.

And that was all until two months later, when we learned that the O.C. of the Snipers was a prisoner in Germany.

An alarmed challenge, muffled voices, the shuffle of feet, and finally the scrape of grounding arms, gave warning that Number Two was waiting. The three officers joined them. All voices were lowered. The Mound was within a stone's throw.

"Where are the Brigade Bombers?"

A heavily laden figure stepped out of the mass of men who lined the broken wall. "Here, sir"

The commanding officer peered at him in the half light of star shell that came from where the Mound towered up the street: "What lot are you:?"

"Royal Scots, sir."

"Three of you?"

"Three, sir"

"Did you come direct from headquarters?"

"Yes, sir."

"Fall in behind me with your men until we reach Shelley Farm , Where the corporal of the Snipers will take you over. No talking now. Forward!"

The men shuffled clumsily down the road in that peculiar cross between a slide and a fall peculiar to the heavily laden trench man who traveled the slippery and popular cobbles of the Belgian roads.

"You'll wish you was back in Jerusalem before this shows over!"

The lead man of number Two snickered nervously to the last of the three bombers. A small wave of mirth washed back down the line.

"Silence! What do you mean?"

The answer was a silence that was broken only by the dull clatter of the hobnailed boots. The reference was to that prideful boast of the Royal Scots that they were the oldest regiment in the British Army; Pontius Pilate's Bodyguards, and always on the right of the line.

Someone said something about the colors. The commanding officer shook his head. That would mean risking more than the lives of men - their honor. The colors lay in their oilskin case in White Horse. Ours was the only regiment in the British Army that was allowed this risky privilege.

At the brushwood hut we left the Ypres road and struck off through the muddy channel of a trail that the patient feet of many heavily burdened fatigue parties had worn deep into the field. To leave it was to get lost in the mist, or perhaps to come to in No man's Land.

An Honor for Corporal Ross

The waste fire of bullets that had missed our parapets whined unceasingly overhead or struck in the mud at our feet. They came from three sides here. They had - at this, the heart of the small salient - lost their force; so they tumbled crazily, making almost the angry whine of small shells and, striking sidewise, terribly destructive. There was a soft plop and a man sat down clumsily, holding his arm and laughing crazily.

"Get up outa that!" And the sergeant touched him with his boot. The trail was choked with waiting men. "Jump to it!"

The man continued to laugh.

"Hell!! Bertha's got him; he's stopped one, sergeant. Here, somebody; give me a hand. "Up you come, matey"

"I'm all right, boys. I got my Blighty!"

He caught up the last peal of that strange laughter and faded back into the mist, laughing his way of Twenty-one; out of all this rain, this continual carrying of heavy burdens; this strain that was beyond all human endurance and stretched the nerves like a harp wire, so that they quivered, snapped and sang; laughing his way to England and rest - rest - rest!

The Snipers were waiting under the blasted tree at Shelley Farm, close by the blood-stained steps that led down into the heart of the churned-up ruin. Number Two was quiet - especially the French-Canadian draft. They had just come up the night before and were new to this. They were in the fatigue party, twenty-five in number, and armed with shovels, with which to destroy the parapet and other vulnerable portions of the sap when captured.

The lack of adequate artillery support and the necessity of a surprise attack combined with the lay of the trench so as to make it inadvisable to attempt a consolidation or retention of the line. We were to drop like a thunderbolt on them out of the night do all possible damage, kill and capture as many of the enemy as possible and, by the grace of God, return.

A delay in the arrival of Number Two at White Horse made us late here. And it upset the three senior officers, however much they might try to hide that fact. It communicated itself to the men so there was a certain grim tenseness that was marked by lack of movement or even guarded words. One, bolder than the rest, endeavored to become jocular and began to hum We'll wind up the Watch on the Rhine! The dry quality of his voice contradicted the words, and the stolid manner in which his comrades received his overture effectually squelched all further efforts for the time.

"Pass the word for Corporal Ross!"

A subdued murmur to that effect ran through the huddled group of men.

"Here, Sir!" And he shouldered his way through and leaned upon his rifle.

The playing of compliments is forbidden all ranks on the actual firing line.

"Corporal Ross, since you know the ground so thoroughly, you will have the honor of leading this affair to-night."

His impassive face gave no sign;; but the little man quivered like an eager horse before the start:

"Yes, sir."

 ³⁷ "Gather round here, you men, so that you can hear me. Your objective will be the German sap in front of Twenty-one."

The commanding officer then described the lay of the ground as indicated by his maps and the reconnaissance:

"The Snipers will lead and will be followed by the main assaulting troops under these two officers, who will, in turn, be followed by the shovelers, under their sergeant. Their job will be to do all possible damage to the German trench by pushing in the parapet and otherwise destroying. We shall leave here in single file by way of the Gap for Twenty-one. Before the Snipers go through the wire they must make sure that the entire party is up and prepared to support them. Not a word is to be spoken after leaving here. Handle your arms with the greatest care. Corporal Ross, when you are convinced that all is ready pass it on to the bombers, who will be beside you. They will then rise and throw together. Then give it to them!"

Corporal Ross had unconsciously drawn himself erect under the impulse of the words.

The commanding officer turned to the waiting men. "Fix swords, men!" And added: "Do it quietly."

There followed the grunts of heavily clothed men straining at places difficult to reach in their equipment, the scrape of the withdrawing bayonets and the cautious click of their striking home. And, as usual, everyone cleared his throat. Tommy always does that on any occasion upon which two or three of him are gathered together, as all barrack-room entertainers will testify.

"Sergeant Connor, you will man Twenty-one with your two machine guns. On no account fire at anything except under direct order, or unless your guns are threatened, as you might shoot our own men. You had better push on at once and get your guns set up on a good field of fire."

"Very good, sir." And the gun crews straggled away.

The interest roused by the commanding officer's words had partially dispelled the somber silence. One man began to hum:

"Just before the battle, mother,
I was eating pork and beans."

A nervous titter ran across or ranks. The commanding officer's teeth came together savagely:

"Be quiet, you men!"

Tipperary was usually noticeable by its absence. Its haunting melody had died long before at our trenches. Such songs always do.

The Soul of the Show

The wiser ones were looking to the east. It was getting late. Just then a bright German moon rolled out from behind its ragged cloud and in terrible grandeur sailed majestically by. We looked at one another and shivered. The dancing ribbon of the searchlights ceased in obeisance. We were threatened where we stood, let alone that other place where we should shortly be. No one said anything . With each passing moment it seemed to gather an added radiance that was scarcely dimes even by the rosy flush of the dawn that now threatened. It held us all for the space it count ten. Though it was quite cold, one man took off his cap and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Otherwise, the waiting was not so bad as we had been told it would be.

The commanding officer shook himself like a man coming suddenly from a bad dream. "Push on, Corporal Ross!" He said, and then stepped on ahead, as a man will when he thinks deeply.

The voice of the second in command trembled with the eagerness of a dog in the leash as he pleaded again to lead the van. The other shook his head slowly, without so much as raising it. "You've already done enough for one night." And aside: "I cant spare you, Hammie. I haven't any offices left. Fall in behind and remain in Twenty-one." The other stepped dejectedly to one side as the men crowded by.

The light-colored raincoats of the senior officers were easy to follow on the burnished bayonets of the men, eerily inviting disaster. The Gap, by its narrowness, held us back in the crossing, so that the old boys had time to make decent adieu to the outthrust head and shoulders of their patron saint. The others held their noses and swore.

By the time the last had passed him the commanding officer and the Snipers had reached Twenty-one. Ross was on his toes, already monopolizing the stage, the very soul of the show.

The commanding officer left them in the disused portion at the left, opposite the principle gap in the wire. As he walked back he directed the oncoming stream, each man to his proper place. He scanned each face closely to make certain that all was as it should be.

He halted a few yards back and stood motionless, with all others, as a star shell swept up in front, flowering in a thousand tiny bursts. Our lads remained motionless, like quail under the hawk, feet poised awkwardly in the air. It died down and they moved on again, crouching, breathless, the pale moonbeams slipping elusively off the long and slender bayonets and lighting up the faces of the living men, the ancient dead, and the churned-up graves, until to the least imaginative it appeared impossible that we were not even then being watched by a thousand hostile eyes and that each moment would not be our last.

 The Attack

The east grew rosier. From the ravished hedges the myriad birdlife that so tenaciously hung to its old coverts twittered expectantly, awaiting the new day. "God bless you! God bless you, men! My children!" The commanding officer's voice broke. He recovered himself; and then to the late ones: "Give it to them, boys!" He turned forward and retraced his steps toward the German sap, thereby breaking yet another of the King's Rules and Regulations having to do with the conversation of highly trained lives.

There was the dull rushing sound of the swift uprising of many men, and all about were grotesque figures that seemed to stand still, though they waved. Eyes became balls of fire. One's chief care was to avoid tripping and so giving or receiving eighteen inches of friendly steel. There were the sounds of straining equipment, of heavy feet; no other.

There was the dull rushing sound of the swift uprising of many men, and all about were grotesque figures that seemed to stand still, though they waved. Eyes became balls of fire. One's chief care was to avoid tripping and so giving or re ceiv ing eighteen inches of friendly steel. There were the sounds of straining equipment, of heavy feet; no other.

Then the tight nerves of an overwrought one snapped. There was one lonely, reedy cheer. And our little war was on.

All other things occurred simultaneously. The adjutant, with Ross and his Snipers, were on their bellies, worming through the break in the wire; spreading fanwise along the German parapet; listening. The German line, from Hollebeke to the Mound, leaped to violent life in a sheet of spitting flame that swelled up sonorously into the drumfire of a devil's tattoo -except the occupants of the sap. These were staggered by this thing that leaped at them from out the mist, and, for the most part, were in a deadly panic, except certain ones who died the death or else retreated down the sap, viciously disputing each turn of traverse, each bend of wall.

In my ears there was the sound of rushing waters pounding in a tropic surf.

The air quivered and beat the brain with its pulsation, so that the hair, doglike, stiffened; the face muscles tightened, the eyes set, and both became rigid.

Green lay with Dave Logan before a gun, the former under it, so that the depressed stream of its solidly brushed his stiff scalp. It drove like a cleaver through the length of Logan in the rear, so that he gave no sigh or sign as his soul passed on.

Individual machine guns coughed up their seven hundred rounds each minute, and by their swing of traverse depressed or raised at leisure the rushing torrent of their leaping flame as each felt for and extended the field of fire, and so gave brief but useless warning to the target.

It was then that there lifted up the voices of those who before had not known their God, promising him now that if only he in his great goodness and mercy would ³⁸ spare and smite not this time, these lives of theirs should forever after in their service pay his price.

At my elbow there rose the distressful wail of a soul in purgatory; and there poured forth the frozen acid of this terrible prayer: "O God, if you will only give me one more chance I will be a better man. Oh-h Go-od!"

My own thoughts raced.

I thought of my father; he who had been so tenderly careful of the soft child-flesh of me. And now this! What would he think?"

It was a titanic leaden sword that flashed and swerved; that circled to the breast; that missed; that swished tremulously overhead or dropped in front of foot, where it flung up great gobs of blinding mud, and still wonderfully missing when living was God's greatest miracle. The sound of it striking was drowned in the uproar, as were mercifully all the cries of men. in the higher strata of its overhead path it left in its wake the rushing vacuum of many winds, like those of a San Juan snowslide.

the star shells burst in scores, aiding the dawn. The heavier fire of the hastily awakened artillery men punctuated the shriller sound of the small arms. The latter rolled up and down five miles of front in great waves of dying sound as other troops took up the alarm.

The whole was great Mars, the stallion, whinnying in his eagerness, quivering in his desire; screaming demoniacally in the warm realization of his ravishment of these, our poor bodies.

A sniper in the first wave, a single man, mouthed stupidly, to no one in particular, "My wine an' kids!" and began slowly to straighten up.

Ross was the first man in. he sprang up, with his stocky legs outspread, his head outthrust from the barrel of his chest; his study figure outlined. he forgot all but scorn. he clenched both fists and shook his rifle at the upturned pallor of a startled German face.

"You --- Give 'em hell, boys!"

He landed catlike on his feet, shooting as he went, so that one man fell to him as he came stabbing, shooting, thrusting; his back to the wall; alone for the moment in a word of foes.

The Scots flung their bombs; others followed, mangling where they lit.

One giant seized a rifle barrel that projected from the look-hole of a metal shield that was set well into the sandbags of the parapet. A German shot at him from below - and missed. he heaved slowly with both hands until the parapet sighed and gave with a lurch that sent the whole mass down on the German heads beneath, confusing and half burying them. he seized his rifle and made a flying football leap into the struggling mass, and went to mad stabbing that ceased only with all resisting movement underfoot.

Sharp Bayonet Work

The white coat of the adjutant drew added attention. "In you go, boys! Give it to them!" He was a cheery as a cricket.

Our lads dropped in by ones and twos. Each carved his way as he went. The adjutant hung over them like a solicitous hen, scorning the comparative security of the struggling trench, feeding up the assaulting men like the ribbon of an orderly-room typewriter.

A few yards away the commanding officer pushed up and down the queue and saw to it that there was no faltering in the feed, and that each shoveler came up to his job.

The men's haste was even greater. Already the sap, full of Germans though it was, offered more security than the parapet upon which was concentrated the converging fire of a mile of German front; all in the space of five score yards.

The trench was deep and its occupants, for the most part, beyond the reach of bayonet; so here and there occurred the sanguinary duels of man to man, when only the stout heart and the quick wrist might decide the issue.

For us, it was kill or be killed. For them, a swift surrender or the sudden test of mettle, man to man, and a half yard of cold steel for the poorer of the two.

We were outnumbered. We were isolated. The main body of the Germans adjoined the sap; ours was over yonder, and no provision had been made to save us if the enemy should shove up reinforcements. Our only hope was the fierce ardor of our charge -- a Hobson's choice.

Those Germans who fought fell, or else proved themselves, for the moment, the better men; and so fought their way down the sap to their main trench line. The others cried "kamerad!" - and were spared.

As our men poured in, no man of them harmed any wounded German.

Skinner rose with the rest of the Snipers and lunged desperately at the inviting white of a German throat. his quarry squatted as for the Russian dance, so that the hungry bayonet glided harmlessly over his head and plunged into the parados in such a manner that Skinner all but followed. The German fired and missed. Skinner recovered himself and from the hip shot his man fairly in the face; and then he himself fell back, kicking as does a bullock at the slaughter.

Some in their brave terror forgot their drill and flogged desperately with the bayonet, striking shrewd blows. A German screamed and flung out hands that were badly lacerated by their protection of his face against such rude attack.

One of our lads, luckier than his mates, from a low spot in the parapet caught his opponent fairly in the breast, so that the point stuck out between the ribs at the back and would not free.

Some Mighty Deeds

Another, with his man pinned neatly at the throat, pulled him to the wall where the stout cords of the neck still resisted his tugging efforts. One who stabbed thus was overbalanced by the weight of the extended rifle; so it fell from his hands into the trench. He chanced all on a gambler's throw and, unarmed though he was, leaped in after it, spitting like a wild cat. As he came breast to breast with his man, he beat savagely with superior skill at the face before him with both clenched fists until the German dropped his own rifle; so the Pat, with one hand, could seize the throat and so force the head against the wall while he reached down for the bayonet to finish him with, dying quickly as he did so from the German rifle fire that was now sweeping the length of the trench from the farther end.

An unknown man of the new draft perceived the havoc wrought by a machine gun that thrust its nose over the main trench a few yards in the rear, and blindly charged it by himself; as he fell at its lip his body almost broke in two.

On the rim of Twenty-one, Sergeant Conner saw this and other things; and he cursed the order that denied to him so fair a mark.

For the most part, these things were done with a desperate lack of words, except that some men rushed up cursing; but in their hearts they were praying, innocent of all blasphemy. I think all growled, as savage dogs do.

Big Jack Munroe, the Montana heavyweight was terrible in his wrath. Even Jeffries, whom he once had fought, would have quailed here. he swung the heavy double-bitted ax of a pioneer so that it sang, twirling it overhead between bursts of use, seeking whom he might devour.

The gentle Laing was a demon, surprising all by the ardor of his private charges, his reckless exposure, and his terrible thrusts.

The somber eyes of the swarthy Nelson were grimmer than ever as he hacked for himself a bloody lane - clearing it for the shovelers, who were now tumbling in, some dying in midair.

The giant Rowley, who had already lived epics in the arctic circle, finished his kill and went to tearing, with his bare hands, tremendous bites out of the parapet, so that the sacks sometimes fell on the wounded of both races and buried them.

Under the arms of their larger mastiff bulk little Foster, the Virginian, and Christie, the bear hunter leaped out, rapier wise, at throats and back again, like savage terriers.

The main body of the Snipers loped on up the trench after Ross and stopped only to contest some hard-held traverse, putting its defenders to the sword. They had this advantage - that, of all those of the defenders whose rifles had been fixed in the loopholes, none had fixed bayonets, or even time to remedy that omission now.

The less forward shovelers took heart of grace; so that all along the line the parapet began to crumble. One, with his clasp knife, made big gashes in the hose of the wrecked pump. Another pounded with his ⁴¹ rifle at the more delicate parts. A third upset it into the sump from which it had sucked the drainage of the trench. The sides were so well boarded that they defied all efforts at destruction.

Ross, having cleared his path, turned about and made for the main-line trench into which the sap ran. in the other direction he knew there was nothing but a dead end; so that the Germans between were in a trap and free to choose between a quick surrender or a swifter death. That his men could do. he plunged forward, seeking new dangers in the other end. he struck contemptuously out of his path, as he did so, the figure of a man with upraised arms who bleated "Kamerad!" The trench fas full of the sound of running men. These shouted like mice.

Green followed Ross into the sap, shooting as he came: so his feet struck the writhing body. It was come quickly - the body; or go swiftly - the soul. Nourse, Inkster and others of the Snipers quickly followed. Those who had leaped in farther up joined forces here. All sought Ross as water does the lower levels. Bullets flicked up and down the trench. Ross pushed on up ahead to find their origin, issuing orders as he went and overlooking officers with all that fine disregard of formal discipline which so well distinguishes the born leader of men in any hour of trial. none thought it strange and few noticed it at the time.

The mud was falling in small chunks from the wall near Greeen, who, if he thought of it at all, blamed it on the spongelike condition of the trench. he watched it as he recharged his magazine before following Ross.

Nelson came up, alert, missing nothing. "What's that?"

"What?"

"The ---"

Nelson dashed after Ross and stood behind him where he knelt; and then, with Nourse, he took turns in alternately passing ammunition to him and shooting at the common target, a projecting traverse from which unseen hands thrust out Mausers that fired blindly down the narrow trench.

The tall body of a German lay stiffly back in an upright position next to Green, as it had for five minutes past. The face was covered with a sandbag, as was customary when there was time, particularly if the wound had been in the head. Green shifted his position so that he leaned against the body with all the easy familiarity of the hardened trenchmen.

The officer commanding Number Two leaped in, a volcanic roly-poly. Nelson, from his post farther up the trench cried: "Look out!"

The officer commanding jerked the sack away; Green sprang back in amazement. "You ---"

A Treacherous "Corpse"

The little officer leaped up and seized the tall corpse by the throat, raining blows with his free hand on the face, while the victim of the assault made most uncemeterylike efforts to cover up. The corpse's cries of "Kamerad!" all but drowned the truly frightful language of the officer. he let go the throat and tugged in mad excitement at his pistol holder, beating mechanically at the German giant in the interval.

Nelson rushed up with his bayonet at the point and ran the German down the trench, swearing terribly at him. Nelson shook with excitement. The German's hands were reaching into frantic nothingness; he chanted "Kamerad!" in wild abandon as he went. They came to a stop at a group of the shovelers.

"Now none o' your ... layin' round here to stick us on the quiet!" For that treachery was a common thing. And paraphrasing an army saying of the period: "Up you go; an' the best o'luck! ... Beat it! . . . For our trench!"

The frightened German clawed frantically at the parapet, seeking a foothold.

"Hup! Hup! Hup!" mocked Nelson in imitation of the drill sergeant, making a playful feint at the prisoner. The latter reached the top and rose to his knees. No sooner had he done so than his head threw off the blue flame of a bad bone hit; so he rolled back headforemost into the trench. And that was only what we faced above.

A young boy lay on the bottom with a badly crushed arm that lay in the path of every heavy foot that passed. "me wounded! Me wounded!" He appealed to each passer-by, in turn, in such a pitiful singsong that it indicated his fear of worse. There was little time either to help or to hurt him, and certainly no inclination for the latter, until Green in passing, noticed him and shifted his body closer to the wall, well out of harm's way, at the same time arranging the arm so that it should not be stepped upon; though he had no time to dress it. he gave as little pain as possible to the boy, who, in turn, looked the dumb thanks of a dog.

A few months before, in our English camp, our men had read of the rape of Belgium, and had then and there sworn solemn and bloodthirsty oaths of "Getting their own back" in worse reprisals against all Germans whom kind fortune might throw into their hands. it was thus they carried out their threats. And let it be recorded here that this was ever their way with all who did their bidding.

These things done, both snipers returned to Ross. he knelt at the extreme end of the trench, beyond the traverse from which the shots had come, and close to the entrance of a large dugout into which the surviving Germans had now retreated. Beyond and adjoining the dugout, a stout barrier of filled sandbags cut off the entrance to their main trench.

On the other side, the voices of many Germans swelled into a subdued but threatening murmur. All these the little man had rushed. he was on one knee, with his chin cupped in his hand.

In a Tight Place

With such an example it was easier for the others to carry on, though the day was coming and it had begun to look as if we ourselves might be swallowed up in a counter attack from beyond the barricade. The nerves of all were stretched taut. The activity of the unseen marksmen did not tend to improve matters. Nourse, the lance-jack, had taken over as next in rank. he fired assiduously at the flashes ahead, which now began also to appear from the top of the barricade. The others fed him cartridges and join in volleys with him. At times they got a better shot at the barrel of a Mauser that was outthrust from the dugout door, fired, and as quickly withdrawn.

The Snipers formed a little knot. They were frankly nonplused. The smallness of the dugout entrance prohibited the advance of more than one man at a time, and he would certainly be speared upon arrival. The successful entrance of a larger number meant a fight in the dark against superior numbers and amid strange surroundings, seeing nothing, and themselves silhouetted against the light of the entrance. A few bombs would have quickly cleared the nest; but, as usual, there were none.

Nourse had been bred on the veldt among the Boers, and claimed their language for his very own: "Kommen ze haus!" The Snipers held their breath. A great stillness fell on the Germans.

"Nourse, give them another whirl!" someone said impatiently. "Tell 'em to come out. We might need 'em as hostages against those other blighters." And he jerked his thumb at the barricade.

"Nourse tried again; "Kommen ze haus!" Silence. But in a moment an unintelligible outburst came from a dozen answering lips.

"What do they say?"

"I don't know." Nourse blushed.

"Well, tell them to come; we won't hurt them. I guess that's what they want to know - if it's safe."

Nourse hung his had.

"I've forgotten."

And so there it ended. The firing was resumed.

The Battalion Snipers of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry prepared themselves to die.

They chose at the last to rush the barricade. Two were detailed to stand at the side of the dugout entrance ready to bayonet all comers. The others were to assault. The first wave of three, using their musket butts as battering rams, were to shove the top sacks of the barricade down on the Germans on the other side, so that in their confusion the remainder of the assaulting party could get over and among them with the minimum of loss; their rear still guarded from a sortie from the dugout.

The volume of the defender's gunfire swelled on the open upper ground; so it weemed that none might live. And yet some did. The adjutant continued to feed into the sap the ribbon of the column. The commanding officer pushed up and down ⁴² the line, moving them up into place, debonair, impervious to fire. The white coats of both made them marked men. The assaulting troops faced the fire only so long as it took them to run the few yards to the lip of the sap; which seemed very long indeed. There they dropped down into comparative safety. The two officers crossed and recorded the field of fire and stopped for nothing.

The sounds of individual machine guns, small arms and shells merged into the staccato scream of many riveting machines - busy, and hammering on steel. The air throbbed, writhed and sucked back in great waves.

The sound lifted us up, so that our hearts left the bodies which e now offered on the altar of our country's service, and we were like to faint. Yet they obeyed God and pulled forward our bodies. Our minds, which had furnished the original impulse; drew back appalled from the scene.

These were the conscious thoughts of no man, for no man had any conscious thought. But it was perhaps - and I say it in honest doubt - the subconscious reasoning that was then gestating in the backs of our skulls; else we could not have continued to go forward in the face of so terrible a fire. To have thought would have been to invite disaster, since in a thoughtful moment our minds might have bid our bodies to flee, and so have caused us to sully forever the fair name of the regiment, beside which the virtue of Caesar's wife is to the soldier but a coarse and common thing. For the soldier to think is dangerous, so long as refusal does not go beyond the point where initiative might cease, and so nullify the gain.

On the five score yards of salient, machine guns that had been rushed up at the first alarm now fired at point-blank range, making fiery noises.

Some of our lads turned quite mad in the whirling maelstrom as the leaden death clawed out at them from the bleak grayness of the steaming morning mist, like a foul and beastly witch. They did their tasks because these remained undone - not for glory: for there was none here. neither was their aught of flinching; but only a courageous madness, with men's minds, godlike, down in hell - investigating it and speeding forward their feet.

Nests of clattering machine guns circled their fire, so that the cumulative sound of its approaching swing was that of many boys scraping the palings of village fences; but more swiftly. The duller thuds of bullets striking home could not be distinguished from the impact on the mud, except for the occasional ejaculation of surprise: "Oh!" It was never one of alarm, but just a sudden flexing of the knees and backward pitch that put the face always up. it was only when the bullet crashed grinding through the bone of skull or spine that their came the smashing impact, that flash of flame such as a rock gives; and perhaps followed by the dying plaint of an already unconscious man.

 The Military Miracle

The grotesque figures grew fewer; some grew more grotesque, and more of them quite still. Most had reached their goal; many their last; the former still seeking the latter in the bowels of the German sap.

The firing died down. The commanding officer spoke to his orderly, retraced his steps, and took up that safer position which the King's Rules and Regulations had indicated as his from the beginning - behind the barricaded entrance of what he called the military Miracle, known on the trench maps as Number Twenty-two.

The sun was about to burst its shell. And, as though they had awaited this, the first quiet moment, the hedge birds broke out into a lifting chorus that swelled up and up in so lovely a melody that we all but forgot our surroundings, and imagined we were perhaps in some great cathedral, and that it was peace. They they, too, fell silent; and it was day.

 The commanding officer shook with suppressed excitement. There was great weariness in his voice.

"Do you think they've taken it?"

The orderly reflected sagely:

"If they haven't they'll never take another, sir. That's a chinch."

The commanding officer threw out his arms appealingly. it seemed to strike him as a new thought, a comforting one.

"That's so!" He rolled it over in his mouth slowly and with infinite relish, taking a morbid comfort in the utter finality of it. "If they haven't they'll never take another." And then, quite casually: "Give my compliments to the officer commanding. If he's killed then to whoever is in charge. Tell him to fetch his men out at once, so that they'll meet me at the rendezvous at Shelly Farm in five minutes. And pass the same word to all noncoms." He looked at the lightening sky. "Hurry!" And added: "Don't let them scupper you."

The orderly did not trouble to salute. He, too, had looked at the sky and gave a very good imitation indeed of a man hurrying. "Yes, sir!" and he was gone. He grinned to himself at the casual air of detachment of the other at such a time and place. He wondered whether he himself should keep that rendezvous at Shelley Form or some other one instead.

A white figure, supported by a long staff came floundering down the rim of the Miracle. The orderly espied him.

"Here's the adjutant, sir."

"Is that you, Teeta?"

"It's me, sir," a cheery voice replied.

The casual words trembled on the other's lips: "What luck?"

"All correct, sir; and trench occupied."

The commanding officer rubbed his hands.

"Splendid!" And then, to the waiting orderly: "Carry on!"

The desultory rifle fire began to gain in volume. it changed to the snarling hammer of machine guns before half the distance to Twenty-one had been covered, the orderly himself the only visible target. He tripped over the cumbersome length of rifle and bayonet and fell headfirst into a water hole.

 Dodging a Pitiless Fire

He crawled out. The fire was worse. he continued, running and slipping. His lungs sobbed for air; his eyes were blinded by the flying mud. he was alone in the wilderness and quite dead below the brain; but that drove his legs onward, willy-nilly, under the spur of the need of all those precious lives. The left-hand and disused portion of Twenty-one loomed invitingly. He sped along the rim until his trained ear shot to his brain the message that the circling death was swinging round toward him. It was but a moment later when it was lifting up layers of mud at his feet. he did not stop to jump. He fell flat into the pit.

There was need of desperate haste if the assaulting party was to be warned before the light became stronger. Seconds were lives. yet there was scarcely cover for a kneeling man. Guided by gunners who had seen, their searching fire combed both shallow slopes of walls and at times reached the floor itself as he "cooned" it up the tortuous way. At each stride his knees clumsily seemed cruelly to strike some hard rifle bolt - so he cursed; the hands struck the faces of living and dead - and he shuddered. The wounded groaned; the less severely merely swore. He had time for neither.

He reached the spot from which the assault had been launched a quarter of an hour before. half a dozen men were lying there. he wondered idly who they were; saw that they were some of the new draft - and understood. They burrowed snugly in their mud and shot anxious questions at him.

He drew himself erect for the final spurt of twenty yards across; but was met by so fierce a flare of fire that he was glad to fling himself on his belly, and without waiting for the storm to subside, dragging himself, in jerks and by his elbows, on and through the mire. it was very slow. he pondered his case: To rise meant certain death and the message undelivered; to continue as he was promised the one slim chance of delivery. The delay for that short distance would, at worst, be only a matter of seconds.

A contemptuous voice from the rear interrupted his soliloquy:

"Get up an' walk!"

He glanced round, still levering himself forward by the elbows. it was one of the new draft. The owner of the voice had his chin in the mud between two friendly corpses.

"Oh, go to Hades!" And the orderly continued his ungraceful squirming.

At the sap he touched elbows with the body of Dave Logan, badly riddled. A score of startled faces gazed up at him.

"Who are you?"

"C.O.'s orderly."

 ⁴⁵ He began to intone sonorously, in the parrotlike chatter prescribed by the King's Rules and Regulations:

"Commanding officer to officer commanding Number Two: Noncoms to note and act on. Meet me at Shelley Farm in five minutes with all your men. Repeat back. Signed Commanding Officer."

"Crabbe's killed!" someone shouted.

"For the love of Mike! What's the difference? The message is for the officer commanding. Give it to Papineau; or, if he's killed, to whoever's in charge," the orderly hissed.

Some men began to pile out in their eagerness to be away. The orderly observed them.

"Here! None o' that, old settler! Wait a minute till the message comes back O.K., or you'll get us all cut up."

The leader fell back shamefacedly. Others began to sort out the four scared prisoners who remained alive, so that they were flanked on each side by a guard and ready for the starter's word.

The officer commanding Number Two was not dead. he was very much alive and with the Snipers once more, as eager as they. The orderly's message came through, as all such messages do, badly garbled; but came at least in time to stop the desperate assault on the barricade.

"An order to retire, sir."

"Who's it from?"

"The colonel, sir."

"Where is it? Let me see it."

"I don't know, sir. Someone sent it down."

 "How do we know who he is? Where is he? Its a trap! It's a trap, I tell you. I won't move an inch without a signed order from the colonel."

"Hadn't we better have the message repeated, sir, and find out who it's from?"

The more cautious counsel prevailed. The orderly, with his eyes glued to the clearing sky, chafed in an agony of impatience. It was quite light and there was the return trip to consider. The other men stood about in dull silence. The fire had again died down to normal and only the "zsst" of odd bullets could be heard overhead.

At last the message came back, distorted again, but with the sense of it painfully evident:

"Crabbe wants to know who you are?"

The orderly almost wept:

"Who in balled the message up?" No one answered. "Now, pass it down right this time and make each man pass it back to you; and tell Crabbe, or whoever's in command of this crush, to shoot it back to me when he gets it right. Now listen, you there!" He again intoned his original message.

The Last of Donald Ross

The men at the dead end waited. There was nothing else to do, except to avoid walking on the wounded Germans. Their own they already had up, ready for the run.

Men halfway down the sap began to clamber out by ones and twos, crouched and desperately running. The habit spread.

"Hey!" The orderly shouted. "Did he get the message?"

Someone shouted:

"Yep. They're all comin'." As indeed they were.

The retirement was on.

The orderly, still bound by his responsibility of seeing that the message had indeed been received all along the line, waited until men from the farther end were going and until fully half were gone, before he, too, rose to his feet and, lowering his head, commended his soul to God and raced for the Gap.

The Snipers had, at first, supposed that Ross was only wounded, and so had laid him out, as they had no time in which to attend a wounded man, even though he be Donald Ross himself. At the order to evacuate they examined him more closely and found him to be quite dead. He was already cold. The broken glass of the periscope in his tunic pocket showed that he had been shot through the heart. And their hearts were bitter. They could not find it in them to leave him so. They were now alone, except for the officer commanding.

He proposed that they should carry the body down to the dead end, from which the run would be shorter and from where they might even take it with them, as well as make certain that all were out. So the Snipers raised their chief and struggled on down the torn trench with the dead weight of him in their arms; a terrible and a trying task in the torn-up condition of the trench.

As they passed the wounded German boy someone rearranged his crushed arm and tossed him a cigarette.

They were all there except the casualties. Under the strain Jackson began to shout instructions, to which no one paid any heed. Each took a hand at carrying Donald Ross, until they saw that it was indeed a useless thing to do, however fine. They laid him carefully on the parapet of the trench he had won, and did the last thing one solider may do for another - took from his breast pocket the pay book and other papers, from his neck the identification disk, covered his face, and left him with his glory. And in the heart of each there was a prayer:

Their own time had come again. Above then the heavy flail of the machine guns beat, Giving due warning of what manner of work was going on up there among their fleeing comrades. They missed the body of Skinner. He had been seen to fall. Their other dead were accounted for. They came to a man, lying on his face, who wore a British tunic. They rolled him over. It was not Skinner, but a German, killed by a bomb apparently, and, to judge by his disguise, a sniper or spy. So they cursed him heartily for the unsuspecting men he must have killed in his time, and passed on.

Under a Withering Fire

They reached the dead end. All had gone and of Skinner there was no sign. The storm above grew worse. They saw to it that their magazines were freshly charged and in good working order, pulled up their belts, cast aside the bandoleers for the better freedom of arm and leg, commended their souls to God, and at the preconcerted signal went over the top.

The retirement was the hard part of it. There was none of the moral advantage of the assault. Neither was there any room for reprisal against the concentrated enemy fire of the sector. The Germans were alert; and, it being now well past dawn, they saw our every movement as we hurled ourselves over Twenty-one and up the slope toward the hedge.

At Twenty-one Laing dropped under the squirt of a machine gun, badly wounded. Someone got him in. Two men - I know not whom - dragged in at great personal risk the body of the unconscious Freund, a brave soldier and guide of parts, from off the wire upon which he had fallen, and lay it where the men of Twenty-one were, so that poor Freund might at least die among his comrades, as indeed he did later in the day.

The slope was covered with the crouched figures of running men, a fair target for every sharpshooter and machine gun, shot at like clay pigeons. The fire, though not so heavy as that of the earlier morning, was much better directed; so our losses were heavier. Men dropped steadily, as did many others who stopped to pick them up.

The fine edge of the assault could no longer endure here. We had, instead, the feeling of hunted hares, shot at endlessly from every side, and with none of the satisfaction of retaliation - a most hopeless feeling, comparable to none other in its desperation.

We wandered back, somewhat rapidly it is true, by ones and odd groups of twos and threes. The Gap was jammed with cursing men, each seeking to get through and out of this.

Some, to avoid delay, had flung themselves bodily at the hedge. Their bodies sprawled on it, supported by the close-set twigs like flies on a spider's web. And all the ground between was dotted with this newer slaughter.

The hedge served as a screen. Beyond it there was at least the ostrichlike security ⁴⁶ of knowing that one could not see or be seen, except by the more distant and less dangerous enemy on Hollebeke Ridge. One could drop back into a walk. There was time to look round. One felt the hot breath of b bullets as steadily as ever; and during the wilder squalls of machine gunfire the dead leaves of the hedge fluttered thickly to the ground. Still, it seemed quite safe by comparison.

The orderly burst through the Gap and rushed up to the commanding officer. He was quite pale from what he had just put behind him. He gasped and his frame was racked with the convulsive intaking of his breath.

"All correct, sir; and the men all coming out."

"Good! Very well done, indeed."

"Thanks, sir."

The last stragglers were still pouring through; the Snipers last. These streaked it straight ahead, pas the scarred apple tree, the two bloated animals, and the worse men, to Snipers' Cellar and their kits. Nourse was trembling with the strain. he had fired nearly three hundred rounds. He was unwounded; but through the thigh of his trousers, the sleeve of his coat and the left breast pocket of his tunic there was, in each case, the neat puncture a German bullet makes.

On the higher ground, on the way to the Cellar, they drew to themselves all the fire of Hollebeke, from where it fronted the echelon formation of our Twenty-three, A, B and C. They made the passage, though further wounds were gained. The shells were breaking about their covert ere they had dived through the entrance, and continued so to do for the balance of the day; so that they dared not leave such shelter as they had, even to relieve their sorely wounded. occasionally the fragments of rock from a close burst came tumbling through the gap in the roof. They cleaned their rifles and paid no attention.

Piper Logan was there, waiting. he looked expectantly at Green. The latter knowing that the piper was aware of his own devotion, chose the easier way to tell him of his brother.

"Hello, Jim! Have you seen Dave?"

The big piper understood. he bowed his head and started out.

"Here! Where you goin'?" someone asked and caught him by the shoulder.

"To get him," he said dully. and then: "Where is he?"

"Come, come, Jim!" said Green. "No use in that. You can't do any good."

The big Scot obeyed mechanically; but all that day he tramped up and down their narrow quarters like a caged lion, unmindful of the clattering brickwork that followed each hit in the broken rubble overhead. And it was not until the next day, when they had reached their billets, that the others ceased to stand between him and his desire; by which time his own good sense had shown him the unwisdom of his plan.

Skinner Turns Up

The commanding officer still waited at the Gap with a word and a smile of proud greeting for each man as he filed by, until all who could return had done so.

The orderly swore anxiously to himself and wondered whether the man would never go - and wondered why, if he must stay, he did not at least lie down, so that he himself could do likewise without being conspicuous. And then, remembering that the other never did lie down, he smiled to himself and made the best of a bad job.

The officer commanding Number Two was among the last to appear. He came smartly to salute in silence, and stood so. The hand at his visor showed the cruel stump of a missing finger. He put the hand smartly away and to his side.

"Very well don, indeed, Crabbe. What! Are you wounded?"

"Thank you sir. It's nothing." And he, too, was gone.

The adjutant came from some private venture of his own.

"All up, I believe, sir?"

"Yes; I think so. We may as well go too." The orderly breathed again.

Just then a weak voice called him by name. He turned and saw, standing in a ditch, the figure of a man, his blond curls and face so plastered with blood as to be unrecognizable, though there was something strikingly familiar about the man. A nasty wound in the forehead half blinded him, so that he was badly dazed and stood with his arms outstretched, groping. The orderly slipped the sling of his rifle over his shoulder to free both hands, and led the wounded man toward Shelley Farm.

"Who are you?"

The man mouthed weakly at his name. It was Skinner, the missing sniper.

On every side sound men were performing similar service for their less fortunate comrades. The main body of them clustered by the ragged remnant of Shelley Farm. over all hovered and air of terrible unreality. Most had lost their caps. Uniforms and faces alike were covered with the mud they had groveled in. Many were wounded. Some had dirty handkerchiefs tied about their heads or made into a rough sling for a shattered arm. Others, with more leisure, were conspicuous in their cleaner first-aid bandages. And, profiting by their example, the remainder called on comrades to get out their clasp knives and rip the seam of the bandage that was sewed under each tunic pocket. On every side could be heard the sound of tearing cloth, as sleeves and trouser legs began to split in preparation for the bandages.

Reaction had set in. Wounded and whole, the voices of both rose up like those of happy sand boys. We swapped experiences and laughed at the worst of them. We pounded one another on the back in hysteria and called rude jests in ruder soldier talk. The dead were already forgotten; which was well, if there was to be any more of this. None who found themselves here had yet recovered from the surprise of finding themselves alive.

Bringing in the Wounded

The procession struck out across the fields for the comparative safety of the Ypres road, down which they had come from White Horse a few hours earlier. The fire continued, but by virtue of the many intervening hedges was less efficacious. Casualties occurred' but the men laughed. What was this to what lay behind? The wounded occupied the attention of most. A few lucky ones were carried shoulder-high on stretchers. Others were glad to go in any manner, so that they moved toward the dressing station at Vorrmezeele. Sound men made chairs. They clasped each other by both hands, so that two hands formed the back, and the other two the seat, in which the wounded man could sit, with his arms round the necks of his carriers to steady them and him.

One man had discovered a baby's perambulator at Shelley. The head and legs of his large patient protruded from the ends, waving loosely, the lips muttering incoherently. The springs gave out at the first shell hole' but the wheels did stout yeoman service until the road was reached, when, without warning, the whole affair gave up the ghost and subsided in the road.

The commanding officer stopped at the road to question the only surviving prisoner. he was a very badly frightened boy, of poor physique and ashen face. A few callow hairs floated wantonly about what should have been a chin. He was to frightened to answer. The commanding officer made a gesture of supreme distaste: "Why, he's a mere child! I fear they'll have me up for infanticide!" And he ordered the man who had the boy in charge to take him to Brigade Headquarters for a closer examination.

The orderly turned Skinner over to a group of men who had just come up from the Voormezeele dressing station, and so had missed the main show; which perhaps accounted for the difference in their later viewpoints.

"Here's someone for you to carry back. I've got to beat it with the colonel.'

"We ain't got no stretcher, mate."

"Here!"

The orderly shoved them aside impatiently, with an eye to the main chance he laid his own rifle aside and asked for two of theirs. He thrust each into the sleeves of an overcoat, buttoned it up, and then twisted the rifles cunningly so that the whole made a passable stretcher.

His task finished, the orderly picked up his rifle and turned away. A voice recalled him. Skinner's' eyes had rolled back into his head, so that only the ghastly white of the balls showed. A fine and blood-flecked foam boiled at lip and nostril, and he ground his blood-caked face into the dirt in great agony. "he's dying! Wait!" they cried.

The orderly leaned upon his rifle and gazed down indifferently. He did not think so. Anyhow, his task was done.

⁴⁹ "Well? What if he is? If Bertha's got him, she's got him. That's all."

He stalked off. The others gasped and then cursed him roundly for a heartless wretch. Eventually the man lived.

When we came to examine the German trench, we found that it was dry, safe and warm, and in startling contrast with that one of ours which lay only twenty yards away. Both were on a level and governed by the same general conditions. We felt that not all of these things could be covered by that perpetual defense of every bureaucratic incompetent: "Forty years of preparedness!" We called it by a shorter and uglier name.

At White Horse the signaling corporal held the key, shouting "PipEmmar!" "Beer!" and other strange terms of his craft. At the news, he disinterred from beneath the rotting straw a full canteen of rum fittingly to observe the great occasion.

The commanding officer dropped wearily onto his biscuit tin. Jarvis, his servant, busied himself with tea making at the brazier.

"Corporal, take this, please." The tired officer scribbled a brief message announcing results to Brigade Headquarters. "Call me, when the answer comes."

"That I will, sir." Reaction was also beginning to get in its deadly work here.

The adjutant came in. They were too tired to exchange congratulations, even had such effusiveness been their habit; which it was not.

Shortly Nourse came in and made his report.

The second in command followed. The water dripped from him from the neck down. he held a shattered wrist in the hollow of the sound arm.

"The swine got me, sir, after the show was over."

The adjutant raised up on an elbow. The commanding officer rose and advanced to the wounded man.

"Too bad; too bad, Hammie! The swine! Here take this. How did it happen?"

"Oh, i