ified paraffin, set alight beneath the
mess tin.

Then bacon--Your issue might be red--and it might NOT. Perhaps the
faintest suspicion of lean fringed it or you might moodily survey a
square inch of fat--if there was not a buckshee inch of rind. The
flowing locks of hair with which this bacon was sometimes adorned has
convinced one that a number of farmers fatten their porkers on
"Thatcho"--it could be combed with a fork!

Bully Beef is, ugh! IT was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be ... NEVER AGAIN.

Bread!

"Something attempted, someone done,
A one-pound loaf among twenty-one."

Had the biscuit been again as hard the famished Ten Hundred would have
got their teeth deep into it. Hunger. A mad craving for food that cannot
be swallowed, because of a dry stickiness in the mouth a tongue that
somehow would not function; a moisture that would not come.

That tea! warm, refreshing, life-inspiring liquid. Drink, to drink long
and thirstily ... the relief, the new vitality. Food vanishes with
abnormal rapidity, every crumb, however minute, is carefully searched
for, gathered into the hand and eaten.

And afterwards you are still hungry, still thirsty.

The "schemers" slipped away quietly from the billets, crossed into the
main thoroughfare and commenced a scrounging expedition for grub.
("Scrounging," an exciting operation whereby the required article is
obtained by any means otherwise than legal.)

Winterflood, Mace and the Duo found their way by instinct born of
experience to an advanced dressing station where buckshee tea was being
doled out. Cups were not to be had, a milk can having to deputise in
three instances while the fourth dug his features deep into a foot long
tin with a quarter-inch layer of tea. Then Fritz dropped a shell,
kru-ump, clean into the centre of the courtyard. The jar caused a pint
of the tea to run caressingly down two tunics then again the genial
enemy sent over another. Si-izz-krump! One of the four scroungers
grunted.

"Boo--want, want any more tea?"--chuckling. They didn't! A third, a
fourth, and a fifth followed. Men looked significantly at each other.

"Bringin' his guns up."

"Yes--heavy stuff, too."

"Be as hot as Hades round 'ere soon."

It was. Hun artillery were adepts at "shooting off the map" (e.g.,
calculating the angle of elevation for concentration on a certain spot
by means of a map), and began to drop near the roadways and cross-roads
a seri