irely owing to my new and expensive waders being
plucked from my feet with a sucking noise. A section of haggard men
are now engaged in salvage operations. Shall we process?"

"We shall--in one sweet moment, not before. Sweet, brave heart,
because----" He put his head round the corner. "Jones--the raspberry
wine--_toute suite_. Just a hollow tooth full, and we will gambol like
young lambs the whole long weary way."

"It is well," remarked the Sapper, returning the empty mug to the
soldier servant. "Personally I like it burnt at night, with a noggin
of port. You put it in a mug, add three spoonfuls of sugar, set light
to it, and let it burn for seven minutes. Then add some port, and
drink hot. Man, you can lead an army corps . . ." His voice died away
as the two officers departed on their three-mile squelch to the front
line, and the unshaven Jones gazed after them admiringly.

"A hartist!" he murmured admiringly, "a plurry hartist. Personally,
the rasberry juice, any old 'ow for me." He disappeared from view, and
further disclosures would be tactless. . . .

And so we lift the curtain on the dawn of the 21st. Doubtless the
setting is frivolous, but it has served to introduce two of the supers
who go to make up the final scene. In the portion of the front line
for which they were bound there lay the battalion which was cast for
the principal part, and it is the prerogative of stars to have their
entrance led up to. . . .

The mist hung thick over the shell-torn ground as the two officers
walked on. In places stretches of half-demolished wire and blown-in
trenches showed where the Germans had put up a fight. Stray graves,
ours and theirs, were dotted about promiscuously, and little heaps of
dirty and caked equipment showed that salvage work was in progress.
Away to the left a few crumbling walls and shattered trees marked a
one-time prosperous agricultural village, from which with great
regularity there came the sighing drone of a German crump followed by a
column of black smoke and a shower of bricks and _debris_. But the
place was dead; its inhabitants gone--God knows where. And soldiers:
well, soldiers have a rooted dislike to dead villages near the trenches.

A strange squat object loomed suddenly into sight--a well-known
landmark to those who wandered daily behind the lines. Derelict,
motionless, it lay on a sunken road, completely blocking it; and the
sunken road was heavy with the stench o