, overheated company commanders are dictating reports
or filling in returns. (Even now the Round Game Department is not
entirely shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on
the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own doings, and a
report on the direction of the wind, and so on. Then there are various
indents to fill up--scrawled on a wobbly writing-block with a blunt
indelible pencil by the light of a guttering candle--for ammunition,
and sandbags, and revetting material.

All this literature has to be sent to Battalion Headquarters by
one A.M., either by orderly or telephone. There it is collated and
condensed, and forwarded to the Brigade, which submits it to the
same process and sends it on, to be served up piping hot and easily
digestible at the breakfast-table of the Division, five miles away, at
eight o'clock.

You must not imagine, however, that all this night-work is
performed in gross darkness. On the contrary. There is abundance of
illumination; and by a pretty thought, each side illuminates the
other. We perform our nocturnal tasks, in front of and behind the
firing trench, amid a perfect hail of star-shells and magnesium
lights, topped up at times by a searchlight--all supplied by our
obliging friend the Hun. We, on our part, do our best to return these
graceful compliments.

The curious and uncanny part of it all is that there is no firing.
During these brief hours there exists an informal truce, founded on
the principle of live and let live. It would be an easy business to
wipe out that working-party, over there by the barbed wire, with a
machine-gun. It would be child's play to shell the road behind the
enemy's trenches, crowded as it must be with ration-waggons and
water-carts, into a blood-stained wilderness. But so long as each side
confines itself to purely defensive and recuperative work, there is
little or no interference. That slave of duty, Zacchaeus, keeps on
pegging away; and occasionally, if a hostile patrol shows itself too
boldly, there is a little exuberance from a machine-gun; but on the
whole there is silence. After all, if you prevent your enemy from
drawing his rations, his remedy is simple: he will prevent you from
drawing yours. Then both parties will have to fight on empty stomachs,
and neither of them, tactically, will be a penny the better. So,
unless some elaborate scheme of attack is brewing, the early hours
of the night are comparatively peaceful.