n front like this--and
teach them something," he said. "This is an admirable part of the line
for instruction purposes."

Whether the Boche would attack in force on our part of the front was
argued upon and considered from every point of view. There were certain
natural features that made such an attempt exceedingly improbable.
Nevertheless infantry and artillery kept hard at it, strengthening our
means of defence. One day I did a tour with the machine-gun commander
in order to know the exact whereabouts of the machine-gun posts. They
were superlatively well hidden, and the major-general himself had to
laugh when one battalion commander, saying, "There's one just about
here, sir," was startled by a corporal's voice near his very boot-toes
calling out, "Yes, sir, it's here, sir." Gunners had the rare
experience of circling their battery positions with barbed wire, and
siting machine-guns for hand-to-hand protection of the 18 pdrs. and 4.5
hows.; and special instruction in musketry and Lewis-gun manipulation
was given by infantry instructors. There was memorable jubilation one
morning at our Brigade Headquarters, when one of the orderlies, a
Manchester man who fired with his left hand, and held the rifle-butt to
his left shoulder, beat the infantry crack shot who came to instruct
the H.Q. staff.

Camouflaging is now, of course, a studied science, and our colonel, who
issued special guiding notes to his batteries, had a few sharp words to
say one afternoon. The British soldier, old and new, is always happy
when he is demolishing something; and a sergeant sent to prepare a pit
for a forward gun had collected wood and corrugated iron for it by
pulling to pieces a near-by dummy gun, placed specially to draw enemy
fire. "Bad as some Pioneers I noticed yesterday," said the colonel
tersely. "They shifted a couple of trees to a place where there had
been no trees before and thought that that was camouflage."

Happy confident days! The doctor, noting the almost summery heat that
had set in, talked of the mosquito headquarters that would develop in
the pond near our quarry. "I'll oil that pond," he gave forth, and
prepared accordingly. Each mail brought him additional copies of the
'Saturday Evening Post,' which he devoured every moment he was off
duty.

I made the joyful discovery that the thick stone blocks kept the mess
so dry and at such an even temperature that the hundred decent-quality
cigars I had brought from England