ecified here. Thereupon the raiding party were to dash
forward and--to quote the Sergeant-Major--"mix themselves up in it."

Two elements are indispensable in a successful trench-raid--surprise
and despatch. That is to say, you must deliver your raid when and
where it is least expected, and then get home to bed before your
victims have had time to set the machinery of retaliation in motion.
Steps were therefore taken, firstly, to divert the enemy's attention
as far as possible from the true objective of the raid, by a sudden
and furious bombardment of a sector of trenches three hundred yards
away; and secondly, to ensure as far as possible, that the raid,
having commenced at 2 A.M., should conclude at 2.12, sharp.

In order to cover the retirement of the excursionists, Ayling was
ordered to arrange for machine-gun fire, which should sweep the
enemy's parapet for some hundreds of yards upon either flank, and so
encourage the enemy to keep his head down and mind his own business.

The raid itself was a brilliant success. Dug-outs were bombed,
emplacements destroyed, and a respectable bag of captives brought
over. But the element of surprise, upon which so much insistence was
laid above, was visited upon both attackers and attacked. To the
former the contribution came from that well-meaning but somewhat
addlepated warrior, Private Nigg, who formed one of the raiding party.

Nigg's allotted task upon this occasion was to "comb out" certain
German dug-outs. (It may be mentioned that each man had a specific
duty to perform, and a specific portion of the trench opposite to
perform it in; for the raid had been rehearsed several times in a
dummy trench behind the lines constructed exactly to scale from an
aeroplane photograph.) For this purpose he was provided with bombs.
Shortly before two o'clock in the morning the party, headed by Angus
M'Lachlan, crawled over the parapet during a brief lull in the
activities of the Verey lights, and crept steadily, on hands and
knees, across No Man's Land. Fifty yards from the enemy's wire was a
collection of shell-holes, relics of a burst of misdirected energy on
the part of a six-inch battery. Here the raiders disposed themselves,
and waited for the signal.

Now, it is an undoubted fact, that if you curl yourself up, with two
or three preliminary twirls, after the fashion of a dog going to bed,
in a perfectly circular shell-hole, on a night as black as the inside
of the dog in questio