well.
The pioneers had done their very best, and made quite a house of our
mess, even finding glass to put in the windows. I don't know that the
old wheeler understood me when I emphasised this thoroughness of the
pioneers by adding, "You see, we British always build for posterity";
but before we went away he began to take a pride in keeping those
windows clean.

On Sept. 25 we heard without much pleasure that we had come under
another Divisional Artillery, and were to retire to our waggon lines by
nightfall. "I'd rather stay here a few days longer and then go out for
a proper rest," said the colonel, taking appreciative stock of the
habitations that had arisen since our occupation. "I'm afraid this
order means a shift to another part of the line." And it was so. Our
Brigade was to side-step north, and the colonel and the battery
commanders went off after lunch to reconnoitre positions. An Australian
Field Artillery brigade came to "take-over" from us, and I yarned with
their colonel and adjutant and intelligence officer while waiting for
our colonel to return. I told them that it was ages since I had seen a
'Sydney Bulletin.'

"I used to get mine regularly," said their adjutant, "but it hasn't
come for ten weeks now. I expect some skrim-shanker at the post-office
or at the base is pinching it.... I'm going to tell my people to wrap
it up in the 'War Cry' before posting it. I know one chap who's had
that done for over a year. No one thinks of pinching it then."

One of the Australian batteries was late getting in, and it was
half-past seven before the colonel and I, waiting for the relief to be
complete, got away. The Boche guns had been quiet all the afternoon.
But--how often it happens when one has been delayed!--shells fell about
the track we intended to take when we mounted our horses, and we had to
side-track to be out of danger. When we arrived at Headquarters waggon
lines it was too late to dine in daylight; and as Hun bombers were on
the war-path, our dinner was a blind-man's-buff affair.

The colonel had been told that we should be required to fight a battle
at our new positions on the 27th, and already the batteries had
commenced to take up ammunition. But when--the Hun aeroplanes having
passed by and candles being permissible in our tents--the brigade
clerk produced an order requiring us to have two guns per battery in
action that very night, I considered joylessly the prospect of a long
move in the dark