ags. On our way across the fields we had
stepped on wires laid on the ground; we had stooped to avoid wires
stretched on poles--the wires that form the web of the army's
intelligence.

Of course, no two units of communication are dependent on one wire.
There is always a duplicate. If one is broken it is immediately
repaired. The factories spin out wire to talk over and barbed wire for
entanglements in front of trenches and weave millions of bags to be
filled with sand for breastworks to protect men from bullets. If Sir John
French wished, he could talk with Lord Kitchener in London and this
battalion headquarters at Neuve Chapelle within the same space of
time that a railroad president may speak over the Long Distance from
Chicago to New York and order dinner out in the suburbs.

These two men at the table, their faces tanned by exposure, men in
the thirties, had the British regular of long service stamped all over
them. War was an old story to them; and an old story, too, laying
signal wires under fire.

"We're very comfortable," said one. "No danger from stray bullets or
from shrapnel; but if one of the Jack Johnsons come in, why, there's
no more cottage and no more argument between you and me. We're
dead and maybe buried, or maybe scattered over the landscape,
along with the broken pieces of the roof."

A soldier was on guard with bayonet fixed inside that little room, which
had passageway to the cellar past the table, among straw beds. This
seemed rather peculiar. The reason lay on one of the beds in a
private's khaki. He had come into the battalion's trenches from our
front and said that he belonged to the D------regiment and had been
out on patrol and lost his way.

It was two miles to that regiment and two miles is a long distance to
stray between two lines of trenches so close together, when at any
point in your own line you will find friends. It was possible that this
fellow's real name was Hans Schmidt, who had learned cockney
English in childhood in London, and in a dead British private's uniform
had come into the British trenches to get information to which he was
anything but welcome.

He was to be sent under guard to the D------regiment
for identification; and if he were found to be a Hans and not a
Tommy--well, though he had tried a very stupid dodge he must have
known what to expect when he was found out, if his officers had
properly trained him in German rules of war.

I had a glimpse of him i