articularly when there were
ruined walls of houses or a row of trees just back of our trenches. The
ear-splitting reports were hurled against them and seemed to be shattered
into thousands of fragments, the sound rattling and tumbling on until it
died away far in the distance.

III. NIGHT ROUTINE

Meanwhile, like furtive inhabitants of an infamous underworld, we
remained hidden in our lairs in the daytime, waiting for night when we
could creep out of our holes and go about our business under cover of
darkness. Sleep is a luxury indulged in but rarely in the first-line
trenches. When not on sentry duty at night, the men were organized into
working parties, and sent out in front of the trenches to mend the
barbed-wire entanglements which are being constantly destroyed by
artillery fire; or, in summer, to cut the tall grass and the weeds which
would otherwise offer concealment to enemy listening patrols or bombing
parties. Ration fatigues of twenty or thirty men per company went back to
meet the battalion transport wagons at some point several miles in rear
of the firing-line. There were trench supplies and stores to be brought
up as well, and the never-finished business of mending and improving the
trenches kept many off-duty men employed during the hours of darkness.

The men on duty in front of the trenches were always in very great
danger. They worked swiftly and silently, but they were often discovered,
in which case the only warning they received was a sudden burst of
machine-gun fire. Then would come urgent calls for "Stretcher bearers!"
and soon the wreckage was brought in over the parapet. The stretchers
were set down in the bottom of the trench and hasty examinations made by
the light of a flash lamp.

"W'ere's 'e caught it?"

"'Ere it is, through the leg. Tyke 'is puttee off, one of you!"

"Easy, now! It's smashed the bone! Stick it, matey! We'll soon 'ave you
as right as rain!"

"Fer Gawd's sake, boys, go easy! It's givin' me 'ell! Let up! Let up just
a minute!"

Many a conversation of this sort did we hear at night when the
field-dressings were being put on. But even in his suffering Tommy never
forgot to be unrighteously indignant if he had been wounded when on a
working party. What could he say to the women of England who would bring
him fruit and flowers in hospital, call him a "poor brave fellow," and
ask how he was wounded? He had enlisted as a soldier, and as a reward for
his patriotism the G