d.

"Course, I am," Bill replied. "I can present hipes by numbers, and
knock the guts out of sandbags at five hundred yards."

We did not leave the village until eight o'clock. It was now very dark
and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed
up with the flashes of guns, the glow of star-shells and the long
tremulous glimmer of flashlights. The blood-red blaze of haystacks
afire near Givenchy, threw a sombre haze over our line of march. Even
through the haze, star-shells showed brilliant in their many different
colours, red, green, and electric white. The French send up a beautiful
light which bursts into four different flames that burn standing high
in mid-air for three minutes; another, a parachute star, holds the sky
for four minutes, and almost blots its more remote sisters from the
heavens. The English and the Germans are content to fling rockets (p. 141)
across and observe one another's lines while these flare out their
brief meteoric life. The firing-line was about five miles away; the
starlights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an adjacent spinney, so
deceptive are they.

Part of our journey ran along the bank of a canal; there had been some
heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming
down by barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less
serious cases go by motor ambulance from dressing station to
hospital--those who are damaged slightly in arm or head generally
walk. Here we encountered a party of men marching in single file with
rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and shovels. In the dark it was
impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.

"Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was
smoking a cigarette contrary to orders.

"The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer. "Oo are yer?"

"The Chelsea Cherubs," said Bill. "Up workin'!"

"Doin' a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
"Got bombed out and were sent back."

"Lucky dogs, goin' back for a kip (sleep)." (p. 142)

"'Ad two killed and seven wounded."

"Blimey!"

"Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness
swallowed up the working party.

The pace was a sharp one. Half a mile back from the firing-line we
turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to
the trenches. We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats
had been given up a week before.

The rain dripped dow