fit for active service. And so the less seriously wounded made
their way painfully but cheerfully along the trench, on their way to the
field dressing-station, the motor ambulance, the hospital ship,
and--home! while their unwounded comrades gave them words of
encouragement and good cheer.

"Good luck to you, Sammy boy! If you sees my missus, tell 'er I'm as
right as rain!"

"Sammy, you _lucky_ blighter! W'en yer convalescin', 'ave a pint of ale
at the W'ite Lion fer me."

"An' a good feed o' fish an' chips fer _me_, Sammy. Mind yer foot!
There's a 'ole just 'ere!"

"'Ere comes old Sid! W'ere you caught it, mate?"

"In me bloomin' shoulder. It ain't _'arf_ givin' it to me!"

"Never you mind, Sid! Blightey fer you, boy!"

"Hi, Sid! Tell me old lady I'm still up an' comin', will you? You know
w'ere she lives, forty-six Bromley Road."

One lad, his nerve gone, pushed his way frantically down the trench. He
had "funked it." He was hysterical with fright and crying in a dry,
shaking voice,--

"It's too 'orrible! I can't stand it! Blow you to 'ell they do! Look at
me! I'm slathered in blood! I can't stand it! They ain't no man can stand
it!"

He met with scant courtesy. A trench during an attack is no place for the
faint-hearted. An unsympathetic Tommy kicked him savagely.

"Go 'ide yerself, you bloody little coward!"

"More lemons! More cricket balls!" and at last, Victory! Fritzie had
"chucked it," and men of the Royal Engineers, that wonderfully efficient
corps, were on the spot with picks and shovels and sandbags, clearing out
the wreckage, and building a new barricade at the farther end of the
communication trench.

It was only a minor affair, one of many which take place nightly in the
firing-line. Twoscore yards of trench were captured. The cost was,
perhaps, one man per yard; but as Tommy said,--

"It ain't the trench wot counts. It's the more-ale. Bucks the blokes up
to win, an' that's worth a 'ole bloomin' army corps."

II. "GO IT, THE NORFOLKS!"

Rumors of all degrees of absurdity reached us. The enemy was massing on
our right, on our left, on our immediate front. The division was to
attack at dawn under cover of a hundred bomb-dropping battle-planes.
Units of the new armies to the number of five hundred thousand were
concentrating behind the line from La Bassee to Arras, and another
tremendous drive was to be made in conjunction with the French, (As a
matter of fact, we knew less of what wa