and heard spent
bullets as they pinged and spluttered into the mud. We crossed a railway
line, and marched or crawled the best way we could along the ditch
parallel with it--truth to tell, cursing and swearing. We passed an old
signal station, now just a pile of bricks, with one side wall still
erect and one glass window intact. We had come to know well that wall
and that window and the strewn bricks around, for we had passed the spot
so often in our little excursions from trench to billet and billet to
trench. A little further along the whistle of the bullets grew louder
and more continuous--their sound something like the sound of soft
notes whistled by a boy. Machine guns--"motor bikes" in our
nomenclature--rattled our left and right, our position being that of
the far apex of a triangle, exposed to inflated fire all the way up.

Arriving within a few yards of the opening of the trench we were to
occupy in relief of the North Staffords, the first section of whom were
moving along the ditch, a star shell burst above as the searchlight was
turned on, and every man stood stock still till all was dark again.

Between men of the incoming and outgoing battalions such casual
greetings were exchanged as: "Wot's it like up here, matie?"; "'Ow are
yer goin', son?"; "Yer want to keep your 'ead well down in this
part--it's a bit 'ot"; "So long, sonnie." Sprawling, ducking and diving,
we got in, and "safe" behind the sandbags. Just as my chum and I had
entered the dug-out, and were preparing to make ourselves comfortable,
as our turn for sentry-go would not be for two hours, the sergeant
shoved his head in and shouted that we were wanted for a ration party.

RATION PARTIES.

A ration party consists of fourteen men--fewer sometimes, but fourteen
if possible, as the proper full complement. The small carts in use are
generally of rude and primitive construction. As everybody knows by now,
rations comprise bully beef Spratt's biscuits--very large and rather
hard--loaves of bread packed in sacks, bacon, jam, marmalade,
Maconochies in tins, and, when possible, kegs of water. Let not the rum
be forgotten. No soldier is more grateful for anything than for his
tablespoonful of rum at half-past six in the evening and half-past four
in the morning. His "tot" has saved many a man from a chill, and kept
him going during long and dreary hours of wet and press. As to bread, by
the bye, it is highly probable that one small loaf, about half t