egrams to be despatched to the 'Next of Kin.'

And to-morrow the official despatch would mention the matter coldly and
tersely; and the papers would repeat it; and a million eyes would read
with little understanding . . . 'changed hands several times, finally
remaining in our possession.'

SHELLS

'_. . . to the right a violent artillery bombardment has been in
progress._'--ACTUAL EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

No. 2 Platoon of the Royal Blanks was cooking its breakfast with
considerable difficulty and an astonishing amount of cheerfulness when
the first shell fell in front of their firing trench. It had rained
most of the night, as indeed it had rained most of the past week or the
past month. All night long the men had stood on the firing step of the
trench, chilled and miserable in their sodden clothing, and sunk in
soft sticky mud over the ankles. All night long they had peeped over
the parapet, or fired through the loopholes at the German trench a
hundred yards off. And all night long they had been galled and stung
by that 'desultory rifle fire' that the despatches mention so casually
and so often, and that requires to be endured throughout a dragging day
and night before its ugliness and unpleasantness can be realised.

No. 2 Platoon had two casualties for the night--a corporal who had
paused too long in looking over the parapet while a star-shell flared,
and 'caught it' neatly through the forehead, and a private who, in the
act of firing through a loop-hole, had been hit by a bullet which
glanced off his rifle barrel and completed its resulting ricochet in
the private's eyes and head. There were other casualties further along
the trench, but outside the immediate ken of No. 2 Platoon, until they
were assisted or carried past on their way to the ambulance.

Just after daybreak the desultory fire and the rain together had almost
ceased, and No. 2 Platoon set about trying to coax cooking fires out of
damp twigs and fragments of biscuit boxes which had been carefully
treasured and protected in comparative dryness inside the men's
jackets. The breakfast rations consisted of Army bread--heavy lumps of
a doughy elasticity one would think only within the range of badness of
a comic paper's 'Mrs. Newlywed'--flint-hard biscuits, cheese, and tea.

'The only complaint against the rations bein' too much plum jam,' said
a clay-smeared private, quoting from a much-derided 'Eye-witness'
report as he dug out