uptly shut off steam. Long white tapering lights
sprang up from nowhere, wavered and hesitated over the sky; caught in
their glare a silvery bird and followed it across the night. Without
warning an anti-aircraft gun launched with a deafening roar its whining
shell heavenwards. Boom! In the sudden uproar Le Page fell off the
train, jerking his tin of bully beef into Clarke's shaving water. The
Jerry airman circled higher, dived again--and dropped his bomb, missing
the train by hundreds of yards. He had spotted the smoke belching from
the engine. Again he spiralled higher, slipped the converging net of
searchlights and escaped ... ugh! The Ten Hundred breathed a sigh of
relief.

Disembarkation from a train at a point a few miles in the rear of the
Front Line always tends to put the wind up you. The mental survey of a
thousand men en bloc conveys immediately to the mind what an obvious and
unmistakable target a battalion forms. Eyes apprehensively search the
sky for the danger that each one knows lurks somewhere up there in that
black pall, the darker by contrast with the brilliant spearheads of
light searching to and fro.

And of course in such windy moments the order to march off is delayed.
Then when you ARE well on your way you wish you were not, for there is
an unutterable weariness in those marches to bivouacs amid dead silence
from end to end of the ranks; only ever present on the ear that
unceasing booming of heavies or the nearer and unpleasant kr-ru-up of a
not-far-distant German shell. Worn, sadly worn, beneath the staggering
weight of packs on aching shoulders, where chafed skin smarts under the
straps, head bent forward and downwards, one cared little for direction.
Onward, always onward, feet burning with heavy going in clogging Belgian
mud.... Sleep, one longs to lie down there and then to sleep, anyhow,
anywhere!

Bivouacs are under the best of circumstances mere makeshifts. "Stoke
Camp"--CAMP! The irony of it--was on a par with the average. Here and
there a scattered tent, here and there a sheet or two of oilcloth, and
everywhere an abundance of water.

Still it was a haven of rest. Men filed tiredly by in Companies, sorted
themselves out, and cast down packs; boots were jerked off anyhow,
rifles stacked. Each man wrapped around him that old and trusty
friend--his overcoat, heads rested on the hard packs ... doze and
dream....

Three headquarters scouts are turned out for guard!

Two hours swingin