ccasions. The red and gold mailed
fist of a General Staff reduces me to a sort of pulverized state of
meekness, which ends in my smiling at everyone and declining anything to
eat.

As machine-gun officer to our Battalion I had to go through it, and as
everyone was very nice to me, it all went off satisfactorily.

On this time out we were wondering how we should find the Boches on our
return, and pleasant recollections of the time before filled us with a
curious keenness to get back and see. A wish like this is easily
gratified at the front, and soon, of course, the day came to go into
trenches again, and in we went.

CHAPTER X

MY PARTIAL ESCAPE FROM THE MUD--THE
DESERTED VILLAGE--MY "COTTAGE"

Our next time up after our Christmas Day experiences were full of
incident and adventure. During the peace which came upon the land around
the 25th of December we had, as I mentioned before, been able to stroll
about in an altogether unprecedented way. We had had the courage to walk
into the mangled old village just behind our front line trenches, and
examine the ruins. I had never penetrated into this gloomy wreck of a
place, even at night, until after Christmas. It had just occasionally
caught our attention as we looked back from our trenches; mutilated and
deserted, a dirty skeleton of what once had been a small village--very
small--about twelve small houses and a couple of farms. Anyway, during
this time in after Christmas we started thinking out plans, and in a few
days we heard that it had been decided to put some men into the
village, and hold it, as a second line.

The platoon commander with whom I lived happened to be the man selected
to have charge of the men in the village. Consequently one night he left
our humble trench and, together with his servant and small belongings
from the dug-out, went off to live somewhere in the village.

About this time the conditions under which we lived were very poor. The
cold and rain were exceedingly severe, and altogether physical
discomfort was at its height. When my stable companion had gone I
naturally determined to pay him a call the next night, and to see what
sort of a place he had managed to get to live in. I well remember that
next night. It was the first on which I realized the chances of a change
of life presented by the village, and this was the start of two months'
"village" life for me. I went off from our old trench after dusk on my
usual round of the m