e rising of the mists put an end to these conversations. Sometimes they
were concluded earlier with bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire. "All
right to be friendly," Tommy would say, "but we got to let 'em know this
ain't no love-feast."

CHAPTER VIII

UNDER COVER

I. UNSEEN FORCES

"We come acrost the Channel
For to wallop Germany;
But they 'aven't got no soldiers--
Not that any one can see.
They plug us with their rifles
An' they let their shrapnel fly,
But they never takes a pot at us
Exceptin' on the sly.

_Chorus_
"Fritzie w'en you comin' out?
This wot you calls a fight?
You won't never get to Calais
Always keepin' out o' sight.

"We're a goin' back to Blightey--
Wot's the use a-witin' 'ere
Like a lot o' bloomin' mud-larks
Fer old Fritzie to appear?
'E never puts 'is napper up
Above the parapet.
We been in France fer seven months
An' 'aven't seen 'im yet!"

So sang Tommy, the incorrigible parodist, during the long summer days and
nights of 1915, when he was impatiently waiting for something to turn up.
For three months and more we were face to face with an enemy whom we
rarely saw. It was a weird experience. Rifles cracked, bullets zip-zipped
along the top of the parapet, great shells whistled over our heads or
tore immense holes in the trenches, trench-mortar projectiles and
hand-grenades were hurled at us, and yet there was not a living soul to
be seen across the narrow strip of No-Man's-Land, whence all this
murderous rain of steel and lead was coming. Daily we kept careful and
continuous watch, searching the long, curving line of German trenches and
the ground behind them with our periscopes and field-glasses, and nearly
always with the same barren result. We saw only the thin wreaths of smoke
rising, morning and evening, from trench fires; the shattered trees, the
forlorn and silent ruins, the long grass waving in the wind.

Although we were often within two hundred yards of thousands of German
soldiers, rarely farther than four hundred yards away, I did not see one
of them until we had been in the trenches for more than six weeks, and
then only for the interval of a second or two. My German was building up
a piece of damaged parapet. I watched the earth being thrown over the top
of the trench, when suddenly a head appeared, only to be immediately