Tunnel was precariously infused with evocations of rural England and we challenged our surroundings with remembrances of parish names and farmhouses with friendly faces. A cottage garden was not an easy idea to recover convincingly. … Bees among yellow wallflowers on a warm afternoon. The smell of an apple orchard in autumn. … Such details were beyond our evocation. But they were implied when I mentioned Squire Maundle in his four-wheeled dogcart, rumbling along the Dumbridge Road to attend a County Council Meeting.
“ Secret. The Bombing Parties of 25 men will rendezvous at 2:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, 16th inst. in shafts near C Coy. H.Q. The greatest care will be taken that each separate Company Party keeps to one side of the Shaft and that the Dump of Bombs be in the trench at the head of these shafts, suitably split. The necessity of keeping absolute silence must be impressed on all men. These parties (under 2nd Lt. Sherston) will come under the orders of O.C. Cameronians at zero minus 10. Lt. Dunning and 2 orderlies will act liaison and report to O.C. Cameronians at zero minus 5. While the parties are in the shaft they must keep a free passage way clear for runners, etc. ”
Such was the document which (had I been less fortunate) would have been my passport to the Stygian shore. In the meantime, with another two hours to sit through, we carried on with our world without end conversation. We were, I think, on the subject of Canterbury Cricket Week when my watch warned me that I must be moving on. As I got up from the table on which we’d been leaning our elbows, a blurred version of my face looked at me from the foggy mirror with an effect of clairvoyance. Hoping that this was an omen of survival, I went along to the rendezvous-shaft and satisfied myself that the Bombing Parties were sitting on the stairs in a bone-chilling draught, with my two subordinate officers in attendance.