concoction, and now they were indulging in an afterthought—stout and oysters. I said that I supposed they must be profiteers. For a moment Durley regarded them with unspeculative eyes, but he made no comment; if he found them incredible, it wasn’t surprising; both his brothers had been killed in action and his sense of humour had suffered in proportion. I remarked that we weren’t doing so badly ourselves and replenished his champagne-glass. Durley was on sick-leave and had come to Liverpool for a night so as to see me and one or two others at the Depot. The War was very much on his mind, but we avoided discussing it during dinner. Afterwards, when we were sitting in a quiet corner, he gave me an account of the show at Delville Wood on September 3rd. Owing to his having been wounded in the throat, he spoke in a strained whisper. His narrative was something like this:
“After our first time up there—digging a trench in front of Delville Wood—we came back to Bonté Redoubt and got there soon after daylight on the 30th. That day and the next we were being shelled by long-range guns. About ten o’clock on the night of the 31st, Kinjack decided to shift camp. That took us two hours, though it was only 1,500 yards away, but it was pitch dark and pouring with rain. I’d got into slacks and was just settling down in a bell-tent when we got the order to move up to Montauban in double-quick time. Kinjack went on ahead. You can imagine the sort of mix-up it was—the men going as fast as they could, getting strung out and losing touch in the dark, and the Adjutant galloping up and down cursing everyone; I never saw him in such a state before—you know what a quiet chap he usually is. We’d started in such a hurry that I’d got my puttees on over my slacks! It must have been nearly five miles, but we did it in just over the hour. When we got there no one could say what all the windup was about; we were in reserve all next day and didn’t move up to the Wood till the evening after that. We were to attack from the right-hand corner of the Wood, with the East Surreys covering our left and the Manchester attacking Ginchy on our right. Our objective was Pint Trench, taking Bitter and Beer and clearing Ale and