volunteer for these shows. One of the Transport men wanted to send his name in for this one; but I told him to think of his poor unfortunate wife, and we’re pushing him off on a transport-course to learn cold-shoeing.”
Prodding the ground with my stick, I stared at the Transport lines below us—a few dirty white bell-tents and the limbers and wagons and picketed horses. I could see the horses’ tails switching and the men stooping to groom their legs. Bees hummed in the neglected little garden; red and grey roofs clustered round the square church tower; everything looked Sunday-like and contented with the fine weather. When I divulged my idea of asking Kinjack to let me go on the Raid, Joe remarked that he’d guessed as much, and advised me to keep quiet about it as there was still a chance that it might be washed out. Kinjack wasn’t keen about it and had talked pretty straight to the Brigade Major; he was never afraid of giving the brass-hats a bit of his mind. So I promised to say nothing till the last moment, and old Joe ended by reminding me that we’d all be over the top in a month or two. But I thought, as I walked away, how silly it would be if I got laid out by a stray bullet, or a rifle-grenade, or one of those clumsy “canisters” that came over in the evening dusk with a little trail of sparks behind them.
We went into the line again on Tuesday. For the first three days Barton’s Company was in reserve at 71. North, which was an assortment of dugouts and earth-covered shelters about a thousand yards behind the front-line. I never heard anyone ask the origin of its name, which for most of us had meant shivering boredom at regular intervals since January. Some map-making expert had christened it coldly, and it had unexpectedly failed to get itself called the Elephant and Castle or Hampton Court. Anyhow it was a safe and busy suburb of the front-line, for the dugouts were hidden by sloping ground and nicely tucked away under a steep bank. Shells dropped short or went well over; and as the days of aeroplane aggressiveness had not yet arrived, we could move