way to our tents, Bill?" asked the rear platoon of one of
the band, which had arrived half an hour before.

"I don't know--I'm not the blanky harbour-master," was the reply. The
battalion set to work, like a tribe of beavers, to make a home. It
banked up little parapets of mud to prevent water coming in. It dug
capacious drains to let the water which was in run out. It scraped the
mud out of the interior of its lake dwellings, until it reached more or
less dry earth. A fair proportion of the regiment melted out into the
landscape, and returned during the rest of the day by ones and twos,
carrying odd bits of timber, broken wood, bricks, fag ends of rusty
sheet iron, old posts, wire and straw. By nightfall those Australians
were, I will not say in comfort, but moderately and passably warm and
dry.

It so happened that they stayed in that camp four days. By the time they
left it they were looking upon themselves as almost fortunate. There was
only one break in its improvement--and that was when a dug-out was
discovered. It was a charming underground home, dug by some French
battery before the British came--with bunks and a table and stove. The
privates who discovered it made a most comfortable home until its fame
got abroad, and the regimental headquarters were moved in there.
Dug-outs became all the fashion for the moment--everyone set about
searching for them. But the supply in any works on the Allied side is,
unfortunately, limited--and after half a day's enthusiasm the battalion
fell back resignedly on its canvas home.

When it came back some time later to these familiar dwellings,
heavy-eyed and heavy-footed, there was no insincerity in the relief with
which it regarded them. They were a resting-place then. Another
battalion had kept them decently clean, and handed them over drained and
dry; for which thoughtfulness, not always met with, they were more
grateful than those tired men could have explained.

For they had been up into the line, and the places behind the line, and
out again.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE WINTER OF 1916

_France, December 20th._

A friend has shown me a letter from Melbourne. Its writer had asked a
man--an educated man--if he would give a subscription for the Australian
Comforts Fund. "Certainly not," was the reply. "The men have every
comfort in the trenches."

That is the sort of dense-skinned ignorance which makes one unspeakably
angry--the ignorance which, because it has hear