tting in the near of this damn town yet?"

I have a vast respect for HINDENBURG (a man who can drink the mixtures
he does, and still sit up and smile sunnily into the jaws of a
camera ten times a day, is worthy of anybody's veneration) but if he
thought that by blowing these poor little French villages into small
smithereens he would deprive the B.E.F. of headcover and cause it to
catch cold and trot home to mother, he will have to sit up late and
do some more thinking. For Atkins of to-day is a knowing bird; he
can make a little go the whole distance and conjure plenty out of
nothingness. As for cover, two bricks and his shrapnel hat make a
very passable pavilion. Goodness knows it would puzzle a guinea-pig
to render itself inconspicuous in our village, yet I have watched
battalion after battalion march into it and be halted and dismissed.
Half an hour later there is not a soul to be seen. They have all gone
to ground. My groom and countryman went in search of wherewithal to
build a shelter for the horses. He saw a respectable plank sticking
out of a heap of debris, laid hold on it and pulled. Then--to quote
him _verbatim_--"there came a great roarin' from in undernath of it,
Sor, an' a black divil of an infantryman shoved his head up through
the bricks an' drew down sivin curses on me for pullin' the roof off
his house. Then he's afther throwin' a bomb at me, Sor, so I came
away. Ye wouldn't be knowin' where to put your fut down in this place,
Sor, for the dhread of treadin' in the belly of an officer an' him
aslape."

Some people have the bungalow mania and build them _bijoux
maisonettes_ out of biscuit tins, sacking and what-not, but the
majority go to ground. I am one of the majority; I go to ground like
a badger, for experience has taught me that a dug-out--cramped, damp,
dark though it maybe--cannot be stolen from you while you sleep; that
is to say, thieves cannot come along in the middle of the night, dig
it up bodily by the roots and cart it away in a G.S. waggon without
you, the occupant, being aware that some irregularity is occurring to
the home. On the other hand, in this country, where the warrior, when
he falls on sleep suffers a sort of temporary death, bungalows can be
easily purloined from round about him without his knowledge; and what
is more, frequently are.

For instance, a certain bungalow in our village was stolen as
frequently as three times in one night. This was the way of it. One
Todd, a