CHAPTER V

THE EXPEDITION TO NO MAN'S LAND

""Turn out, you chaps! You're warned for duty in the first-line trench."

"Turn

With the sergeant's words ringing in his ears Ralph Setley arose from his uncomfortable bed. A candle was still guttering. It was not yet dawn. The Huns' protracted shelling had ceased until the time for their customary morning "hate."

The rest of the occupants of his dug-out were engaged upon their morning "toilet"—the rite consisting of cleaning and oiling their rifles. Washing was out of the question, and as they had turned in fully dressed, including great-coats and boots, there was nothing further to be done beyond cooking breakfast.

Thanks to the blunder of the rationing party the men regaled themselves with slices of bacon, bread not more than three days old, and tea of exceptionally strong brew. The bacon was gritty, which was not to be wondered at, seeing that the men had been under shell-fire almost the whole way to the trenches.

Alderhame was in high spirits notwithstanding he had had but a few hours' sleep. There was a touch of the far-off "green-room" days, as he laid his hand on Setley's shoulder.

"Come on, laddie," he said. "Let's survey the radiant morn:—

 

 

Viewed in the pale grey dawn, the dreary stretch of No Man's Land was robbed of most of its ghastly details. Here and there, often in heaps, huddled corpses dressed in mud-stained field-grey testified to the accuracy of the British rifle and machine-gun fire. Further away lay the trenches that the Wheatshires had visited so effectively. Already Hun wiring parties had been out, and the shattered stakes and snake-like coils of severed barbed wire had been replaced by new. Almost in the front row of wire a black, white, and red striped flag—the emblem of Germany—fluttered in the faint breeze.

Setley could now understand why the order for recall 

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