made a dug-out in those days you made it out of anything you
could find, and generally had to make it yourself. That first night I
was "in" I discovered, after a humid hour or so, that our battalion
wouldn't fit into the spaces left by the last one, and as regards
dug-outs, the truth of that mathematical axiom, "Two's into one, won't
go," suddenly dawned on me with painful clearness. I was faced with
making a dug-out, and it was raining, of course. (_Note._--Whenever I
don't state the climatic conditions, read "raining.") After sloshing
about in several primitive trenches in the vicinity of the spot where we
had fixed our best machine-gun position, my sergeant and I discovered a
sort of covered passage in a ditch in front of a communication trench.
It was a sort of emergency exit back from a row of ramshackle,
water-logged hovels in the ditch to the communication trench. We decided
to make use of this passage, and arranged things in such a way that by
scooping out the clay walls we made two caves, one behind the other. The
front one was about five yards from the machine gun, and you reached the
back cave by going through the outer one. It now being about 11 p.m.,
and having been for the last five hours perpetually on the scramble,
through trenches of all sorts, I drew myself into the inner cave to go
to sleep.

This little place was about 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet wide. I
got out my knife, took a scoop out of the clay wall, and fishing out a
candle-end from my pocket, stuck it in the niche, lit it and a
cigarette. I now lay down and tried to size up the situation and life
in general.

Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity, somewhere in Belgium, miles
and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud. This was
the first day; and, so far as I could see, the future contained nothing
but repetitions of the same thing, or worse.

[Illustration: rucksacks]

Nothing was to be heard except the occasional crack of the sniper's
shot, the dripping of the rain, and the low murmur of voices from the
outer cave.

In the narrow space beside me lay my equipment; revolver, and a sodden
packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end
guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the
Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life,
and then--swish, bang--back to the reality that the damp clay wall is
only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am--that