that he could go to bed in his 3 feet by 6 feet
cubby-hole, and that the orderlies waiting to convey the battle orders
to the batteries ought to snatch some rest also. It was 11 P.M. now.
Wilde and the doctor had gone off to their own dug-out. It was very
dark when I looked outside the mess. We were in a lonely stretch of
moorland; the nearest habitation was the shell-mauled cottage at the
railway crossing, two miles away. Every ten minutes or so enemy shells
screamed and flopped into the valley between us and the road alongside
which D Battery lay.

"We'll try and hurry these people up," said the colonel, picking up the
telephone. Even as he told the signaller on duty to get him Divisional
Artillery, a call came through. It was the Artillery Brigade from whom
we expected a messenger with the orders.

"No!" I heard the colonel say sharply. "We've had nothing.... No! no
one has been here with a watch.... You want an officer to come over to
you?... But I haven't any one who knows where you are."

A pause. Then the colonel continued. "Yes, but you know where we are,
don't you?... Umph.... Well, where are you to be found?... You can't
give a co-ordinate over the telephone?... That's not very helpful."

He rang off, but I knew by his expression that the matter was not yet
settled. He got through to the --th Divisional Artillery and told the
brigade-major that it was now 11.20 P.M., that no officer with a
synchronised watch had arrived, and that the other brigade were now
asking us to send an officer to them for orders for the coming battle.
"I have no one who knows where they are," he went on. "They must know
our location--we relieved one of their brigades. Why can't they send to
us as arranged? I may have some one wandering about half the night
trying to find them."

In a little while the telephone bell tinkled again. "I'll answer them,"
said the colonel abruptly.

"All right, I'll send to them," he replied stonily. "Where are we to
find them, since they won't give us co-ordinates over the telephone?...
A house with a red roof!... You can't tell us anything more
definite?... Very well.... Good-bye."

He put down the telephone with a little "Tchat!" that meant all forms
of protest, annoyance, and sense of grievance. But now that no possible
concession was to be gained, and certain precise work had to be done by
us, he became the inexorable matter-of-fact executive leader again.
"There's nothing for it," he said, loo