gs at home. About our gas-pumps I
know nothing except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in
the chemical corps of the sappers, and your corporal is, in nine cases
out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one
of considerable distinction. He is usually a lecturer or
Assistant-Professor in Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who
has left his test-tubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting
allurements of the trenches. I sometimes wonder what name the fertile
brain of the British soldier has found for him--probably "the squid." He
has three gases in his repertoire, each more deadly than the other. One
of them is comparatively innocuous--it disables without debilitating;
and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes. The truth is that we
do not take very kindly to the use of this kind of thing. Still, our men
know their business, and our gas, whichever variety it was, played a
very effective part in the capture of the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

For the greater part of the winter months the "Front" was, to all
appearances above ground, as deserted as the Sahara and almost as
silent. Everybody who had to be there was, for obvious reasons,
invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who found himself between the
lines was in a wilderness whose intimidating silence was occasionally
interrupted by the sound of projectiles coming he knew not whence and
going he knew not whither. The effect was inexpressibly depressing. But
a mile or two behind our lines all was animation, for here were
Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked up by a network of field
telephones, which in turn communicated with Divisional Headquarters
farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under the care of a pigeon
fancier, who figures in the Army List as a captain in the R.E., are kept
at these places for use in sudden emergency when the wires get destroyed
by shell-fire. The sappers must, I think, belong to the order of
Arachnidae; they appear to be able to spin telephone wires out of their
entrails at the shortest notice. Moreover, they possess an uncanny
adhesiveness, and a Signal Company man will leg up a tree with a coil of
wire on his arm and hang glutinously, suspended by his finger-tips,
while he enjoys the view. These acrobatic performances are sometimes
exchanged for equestrian feats. He has been known to lay cable for two
miles across country at a gallop with the cable-drum paying out lengths
of