of the trench there were no dug-outs and our sleep had to be
obtained in the open air. In fact, until the fourth day I
only had one hour's sleep, and on the last day I managed
about five hours. The chief trouble was trying to boil
water, but we managed by cutting a candle into small pieces
and putting this, with a piece of rag, into a tin, using the
rag as a wick.

"Our five days and nights were on the whole fairly quiet; in
fact, during the day hardly any shots were exchanged, most
of the firing being done at night. During the day it was
impossible to look over the trench, as we were only fifty
yards from the Germans, so we considered it advisable not to
exhibit too much curiosity in case our health suffered
thereby. At night time the Germans use star-shells to
illuminate the proceedings, and they always seem nervy and
think we are going to attack their trench. If we start
firing a little more than usual they think it is the signal
for an attack, and they blaze away like fury. We had a good
example of this on our last night in the trenches.

"Someone started firing, someone else took it up and in no
time the noise was like the final end-up of fireworks at the
White City. From that it got much worse, and I suppose they
really thought we were going for them, so their artillery
sent us a few shells; but they did no damage. Eventually
they seemed satisfied that we were quite safe, so they wound
up the proceedings.

"There is one lot here who, whenever they go into the
trenches, shove their hats on their rifles, wave them about,
and then shout across to the Germans to come out in the open
and have a proper fight. Whenever this happens the Germans
lie low and hardly fire a shot.

"One advantage of being so close to the Germans is that they
cannot shell us without damaging their own trench as much as
ours, so that, although we heard plenty going along
overhead, we had none very near us."

One Young Man at Hill 60

CHAPTER V

ONE YOUNG MAN AT HILL 60

Many have described in vivid, and none in too vivid, language the
fighting in the spring of 1915. This one young man went through it
all, through the thickest of it all. He can tell a tale which, if
written up and around, would be as thrilling as any yet recorded of
those heroic day