lock
it. But who was the crazy ass who started it by singing the
'Marseillaise'?" On this point, however, 'Enery was discreetly silent.

Before the French had cleared the trench the Germans opened a leisurely
bombardment with a trench mortar. This delayed the proceeding somewhat,
because it was reckoned wiser to halt the men and clear them from the
crowded trench into the dug-outs. "With the double company of French
and British, there was rather a tight squeeze in the shelters,
wonderfully commodious as they were.

"Now this," said Corporal Flannigan, "is what I call something like a
dug-out." He looked appreciatively round the square, smooth-walled
chamber and up the steps to the small opening which gave admittance to
it. "Good dodge, too, this sinking it deep underground. Even if a bomb
dropped in the trench just outside, and pieces blew in the door, they'd
only go over our heads. Something like, this is."

"I wonder," said another reflectively, "why we don't have dug-outs like
this in our line?" He spoke in a slightly aggrieved tone, as if dugouts
were things that were issued from the Quarter-Master's store, and
therefore a legitimate cause for free complaint. He and his fellows
would certainly have felt a good deal more aggrieved, however, if they
had been set the labor of making such dug-outs.

Up above, such of the French and British as had been left in the trench
were having quite a busy time with the bombs. The Frenchmen had rather
a unique way of dodging these, which the Towers were quick to adopt.
The whole length of the trench was divided up into compartments by
strong traverses running back at right angles from the forward parapet,
and in each of these compartments there were anything from four or five
to a dozen men, all crowded to the backward end of the traverse,
waiting and watching there to see the bomb come twirling slowly and
clumsily over. As it reached the highest point of its curve and began
to fall down towards the trench, it was as a rule fairly easy to say
whether it would fall to right or left of the traverse. If it fell in
the trench to the right, the men hurriedly plunged round the corner of
the traverse to the left, and waited there till the bomb exploded. The
crushing together at the angle of the traverse, the confused cries of
warning or advice, or speculation as to which side a bomb would fall,
the scuffling, tumbling rush to one side or the other, the cries of
derision which greeted