place at midnight; in the
morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a
jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs,
holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog
dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones
showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if
the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our
laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and
sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by
the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:--

Here lies a dog as dead as dead,
A Sniper's bullet through its head,
Untroubled now by shots and shells,
It rots and can do nothing else.

The village where I write this is shelled daily, yesterday three men,
two women and two children, all civilians, were killed. The (p. 263)
natives have become almost indifferent to shell-fire.

In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange
things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.

CHAPTER XIX (p. 264)

SOUVENIR HUNTERS

I have a big French rifle, its stock is riddled clean,
And shrapnel smashed its barrel, likewise its magazine;
I've carried it from A to X and back to A again,
I've found it on the battlefield amidst the soldiers slain.
A souvenir for blighty away across the foam,
That's if the French authorities will let me take it home.

Most people are souvenir hunters, but the craze for souvenirs has
never affected me until now; at present I have a decent collection of
curios, consisting amongst other things of a French rifle, which I
took from the hands of a dead soldier on the field near Souchez; a
little nickel boot, which was taken from the pack of a Breton
piou-piou who was found dead by a trench in Vermelles--one of our men
who obtained this relic carried it about with him for many weeks until
he was killed by a shell and then the boot fell into my hands. I have
two percussion caps, one from a shell that came through the roof of a
dug-out and killed two of our boys, the other was gotten beside a dead
lieutenant in a deserted house in Festubert. In addition to these (p. 265)
I have many shell splinters that fell into the trench and landed at my
feet, rings made from aluminium timing-pieces of shells and several
other odds and e