my boot rested on Stoner's face.

"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and
stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over
another prostrate form.

"Stand-to! Stand-to!"

We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette,
each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and
entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our
equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the
bayonets are always fixed.

"Where's Z----?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.

"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."

"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it
lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun.
The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."

Z---- stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out. (p. 096)

"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.

"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get
on with the work."

In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive
the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits
for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we
stood for half a day.

The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in
intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The
last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air
for a space, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the
trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and
shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and
there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it
were, on the grass.

"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said
Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."

The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked
enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097)
fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes,
a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth
again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see the
German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on
the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing
again.

"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliat