e me safely
through dangers and darkness, on crowded roads and untracked fields.
What dances we have had together, Dandy, when I have got the bands to
play a waltz and you have gone through the twists and turns of a
performance in which you took an evident delight! I used to tell the
men that Dandy and I always came home together. Sometimes I was on his
back and sometimes he was on mine, but we always came home together.

A few days later my establishment was increased by the purchase of a
well-bred little white fox-terrier. He rejoiced in the name of Philo
and became my inseparable companion. The men called him my curate.
Dandy, Philo and I made a family party which was bound together by very
close ties of affection. Though none of us could speak the language of
the others, yet the sympathy of each enabled us to understand and
appreciate one another's opinions. I always knew what Dandy thought
and what he would do. I always knew too what Philo was thinking about.
Philo had a great horror of shells. I put this down to the fact that
he was born at Beuvry, a place which had been long under shell-fire.
When he heard a shell coming in his direction, Philo used to go to the
door of the dugout and listen for the explosion, and then come back to
me in a state of whining terror. He could not even stand the sound of
our own guns. It made him run round and round barking and howling
furiously.

It was while we were out in rest at Bethune that I was told I could go
on a week's leave to London. I was glad of this, not only for the
change of scene, but for the sake of getting new clothes. I awoke (p. 092)
in the early morning and listened to the French guns pounding away
wearily near Souchez. At noon I started with a staff officer in a
motor for Boulogne. It was a lovely day, and as we sped down the road
through little white unspoilt villages and saw peaceful fields once
again, it seemed as if I were waking from a hideous dream. That
evening we pulled in to Victoria Station, and heard the Westminster
chimes ringing out half past eight.

CHAPTER VIII. (p. 093)

PLOEGSTEERT--A LULL IN OPERATIONS.

_July to December, 1915._

Leave in London during the war never appealed to me. I always felt
like a fish out of water. When I went to concerts and theatres, all
the time amid the artistic gaiety of the scene I kept thinking of the
men in the trenches, their lonely vigils, t