dinner we'll have when we get back to England. _Allons_, I'll begin
with turtle soup."

"And a glass of sherry," added I from my pillow.

"Then, I think, turbot and white sauce."

"Good enough," I agreed, "and we'll trifle with the wing of a fowl."

"Two cream buns for sweets," continued the Brigade Bombing Officer,
"or possibly three. And fruit salad. _Ah, mon dieu, que c'est
beau!_"

"And a piece of Stilton on a sweet biscuit," suggested the Captain
of D Company, "with a glass of port."

"Yes," conceded the Bombing Officer, "and then cafe noir, and an
Abdulla No. 5 in the arm-chair. _Sapristi_! isn't it cold?" He
turned round sulkily in his bed. "If it's like this to-morrow I
shan't get up--no, not if Gladys Cooper comes to wake me."

So he dropped off to sleep.... And, with Doe asleep, I can say that
to which I have been leading up. Always before the war I used to
think forced and exaggerated those pictures which showed the soldier
in his uniform, sleeping on the field near the piled arms, and
suggested, by a vision painted on the canvas, that his dreams were
of his hearth and loved ones. But I know now of a certain
Captain-fellow, who, on that first night of the blizzard, after he
had received a letter from his mother, dreamt long and fully of
friends in England, awaking at times to find himself lying on a
lofty wild Bluff, and falling off to sleep again to continue dreams
of home.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NINETEENTH OF DECEMBER

Sec.1

The grand incident in the last act of the Gallipoli Campaign--the
grand _motif_--was the Germans' successful break through Servia.
They had driven their corridor from Central Europe through Servia to
Constantinople; and, for all we knew, the might of Germany in men
and guns were pouring down it. Of course they were coming; they must
come. Never had the generals of Germany so fine an opportunity of
destroying the British Divisions that languished at Suvla and
Helles. What chance had the Haughty Islanders now of escaping?
The wintry storms were already cutting their frail line of
communications by sea, and smashing up their miserable jetties on
the beaches. The plot should unravel simply. The German-Turk combine
would attack in force, and the British, unable to escape, would
either surrender or, in good Roman style, die fighting.

We knew the Germans were coming. When the blizzard rolled away and
left behind a glorious December, we began to hear their new guns
throbb