committal answer of the Engineer.

"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.

"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go
through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before
this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he (p. 068)
continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench,
"never moves me. _You'll_ feel it a bit being just new out, but when
you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."

In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it
up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down
a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went
back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men
called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our
potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but
for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion
"stopped a packet."

CHAPTER VI (p. 069)

IN THE TRENCHES

Up for days in the trenches,
Working and working away;
Eight days up in the trenches
And back again to-day.
Working with pick and shovel,
On traverse, banquette, and slope,
And now we are back and working
With tooth-brush, razor, and soap.

We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at
the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had
not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.

Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his
shovel.

"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit
from his haversack.

"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"

"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the
latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it
wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were
new to the grind of war.

"I've found out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat from (p. 070)
his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing line. A
shell whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the trenches
have got a humour peculiarly their own.

"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sell _cafe noir_
and _pain et beurre_."

"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like
ourselves."

"I've just been in the house