emarks
in anticipation of what everybody knew was coming. The officers with us
were one with us, and at their words, "Well, come on, lads," there was
never a laggard in getting "over the tops" (in our own phraseology). As
soon as we put our hands on the sandbags to clamber over the top of the
parapet a hailstorm of bullets pelted us. It is impossible--at all
events for me--to describe a charge. Speaking for myself, always my
brain seemed to snap. It was simply a rush in a mad line--or as much of
a line as could be kept--towards the enemy's barbed wire entanglements,
which our guns had blown to smithereens in preparation for the assault.
We scrambled on to their parapet, each getting at the first man he
could touch. When we had taken their position (we didn't always) we
might have to wait some time till our artillery had shelled the second
line, but there was a lot of work to be done at once. The parapet had to
be reversed.

After an attack there was generally a roll call--from which there were
many absentees.

More trying--more wearing and tearing to the nerves--than anything
that in my experience ever followed it was the stand to itself. The
moments, minutes, even hours, that followed that old familiar order,
"stand to," were the worst I ever went through. As every eventide comes
on I still feel just a little--just a very little--of what I felt then.
Even now: and I fear me I always shall till death bids me stand to.

I see I have written so much with only one illustration, that perhaps it
won't be amiss if I place here a few typical heads and a couple of
typical full figures, the original sketches of which I pencilled in
spare places in my notebook at odd times. If they be really typical they
need no labelling.

[Illustration: TYPICAL FIGURES AND FIGURE-HEADS.]

CHAPTER V.

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF TRENCH LIFE.

That there was (and is) a lighter side, a social side, of trench life,
as of the life generally of a soldier on active service, even in this
war, merely incidental remarks of mine such as could not be omitted from
any true and fair description of that life must furnish abundant
evidence; but this lighter side was, in my experience, so very real and
so pronounced that to illustrate a few set observations thereon I take a
few sketches from my notebook out of the order in which I find them in
it.

SING-SONGS.

Our concert parties were "immense," and there was no forced gaiety in
our enjoyment of