ll."

'"If we don't leave this 'ouse, sir," I sez, "seems to me it'll leave
us--an' in ha'penny numbers at that."

'So he reports to the Major, an' I packs up, an' we cleared. The
shelling had slacked off a bit, though the trenches was still slingin'
lead hard as ever.

'"We must hurry," sez the F.O. "They're going to bombard a trench for
ten minutes at noon, and I must be in touch by then."

'We scurried round to the other post, and just got fixed up before the
shoot commenced. And in the middle of it--phutt goes first one wire
an' then the other. The F.O. said things out loud when I told him.
"Come along," he finished up; "we must mend it at once. The infantry
assault a trench at the end of the ten minutes. There they go now,"
and we heard the roar of the rifles swell up again. He took a long
stare out through his glasses and then we doubled out. The Germs must
have thought there was a big assault on, and their gunners were putting
a zone of fire behind the trenches to stop supports coming up. An' we
had to go through that same zone, if you please. 'Strewth, it was hot.
There was big shells an' little shells an' middle-sized shells, roarin'
an' shrieking up and bursting H.E. shrapnel or smashing into the
ground. If there was one threw dirt over us there was a dozen. One
buzzed close past and burst about twenty feet in front of the F.O., and
either the windage or the explosion lifted him off his feet and clean
rolled him over. I thought he was a goner again, but when I came up to
him he was picking himself up, an' spittin' dirt an' language out
between his teeth, an' none the worse except for the shakin'. We
couldn't find that break. We had to tap in all along the wire to
locate it and all the time it was a race between us finding the break
and a shell finding us. At last we got it, where we'd run the wire
over a broke-up shed. The F.O. was burnin' to talk to the Battery,
knowing they'd be anxious about their shoot, so he picked a spot in the
lee of a wall an' told me to tap in on the wire there. Just as he
began talkin' to the Battery a Coal-Box soars up an' bumps down about
twenty yards away and beyond us. The F.O. looks up, but goes on
talkin'; but when another shell, an' then another, drops almost on the
exact same spot, he lifted the 'phone closer in to the wall and stoops
well down to it. I needn't tell you I was down as close to the ground
as I could get without digging. "I think we're a