Patrick's Day I'm waitin'
for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!"

He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved
away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had
done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The
General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?"
It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the
group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.

We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time.
We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a
shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember
that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of
men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road,
with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for
the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was
further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we
come back."

At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the
road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He
was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a
shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was
making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed
over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain ---- regretfully, "but we
brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village--a splendid
fight."

Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village
from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The
shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact
still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish
artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a
comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping
through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed
that no aeroplane overhead could guess it.

There it was--how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and
northern workshops!--its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten
high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is
put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers
in my ear