rcumstance to
section-commanders as if they had lost one round of small arms
ammunition or the last cube from an iron ration.

The hobby of the civilian labourer is obstacle-racing. To do this you
require a dark night, the assistance of some Royal Engineers, an
appointment just behind the front line with some supervisor of labour
whom you don't know and don't specially want to, and a four-mile stretch
across country to the rendezvous.

You start out at nightfall and do good time over the first hundred
yards. The field consists of forty to eighty labourers, and one of the
idle rich (formerly styled officers). At the hundred yards' mark the
Royal Engineers begin to come in. Obstacle 1 is a model trench, built
for instructional purposes and now being turned to obstructional
account. There's one place where you can get on to the parades without
swimming, and if we started by daylight we might strike it. We do not
start by daylight.

Beyond the trench is a wire entanglement, also a fine specimen of early
1915 R.E. work. We may note in passing the trip wire eight yards beyond.
We're getting pretty good with it now, but in our early days the R.E.
used to get a lot of marks for it.

You go on towards a couple of moated hedges, whimsically barbed in odd
spots, and emerge into a park or open space leading into an
unhealthy-looking road. It seems all plain sailing to the road--unless
you know the R.E., in which case you will not be surprised to find your
neck nearly bisected by a horizontal wire designed to encourage
telephonic communication.

Eventually you all reach an area known for some obscure reason--if for
any at all--as "The Brigade." Here the R.E. have a new game waiting for
you. We call it "Hunt the Shovels." You have been instructed to draw
shovels from the Brigade. The term covers a space of some thousand
square metres intersected with hedges, bridges, rivers, dugouts,
horseponds (natural and adventitious), any square metre of which may
contain your shovels.

If you are not behind time so far this is where you drop a quarter of an
hour. Of course you may just get fed up and go home. But in that case
you aren't allowed to play again, and as a matter of fact the game is
rather _de rigueur_ out here. So you hide your party behind a sign-post,
which tells you--if it were not too dark to read--INFANTRY MUST NOT HALT
HERE, and then a lance-corporal with a good nose for shovels looks
through the more likely hiding-pla