The phone rings sharply. “You’re wanted, sir.” The message is shouted up from the depths of the dug-out. I press the button of my flash-lamp and hurriedly slither down the innumerable greasy stairs. As I take the receiver, I tell the signaller to light another candle as there may be a message to pencil. He lights the candle and sticks it against the planked wall in the orthodox way, by warming the wall with the flame so that the heat may melt the wax.
“Hulloa! Hulloa!... Oh, it’s you sir!” It’s my Major.
“No, the friend who came to see me, this morning has not returned; he went somewhere.... Yes, I know; he ought to have taken over from me... O, here he is.... You’ll have horses for... all my party. Yes, sir, I understand. I won’t waste any time.”
I turn round to the officer who is to relieve me, “You took your time, old thing, I must say. I hope the dinner at battalion headquarters was a wet one. But you’ve rather crowded me; my battery hits the trail tonight.”
He starts a lengthy explanation, but I’m in a hurry to be gone. While I hand over to him my fighting maps, my linesmen are loading themselves with reels of wire and instruments.
“Well, so long,” I say.
“Good luck,” he replies.
How often I have spoken such words in this cramped death-trap; now I’m speaking them for the last time. I take a final look round; there’s the frame-work bunk, with the chicken-wire nailed over it, on which I have spent so many restless nights; there’s the ground-sheet tacked over the second exit through which the draught was so persistent in coming; there’s the penciled message on the wall to his sweetheart in the Argonne from the captured French soldier who slaved for the Hun—a message of deathless love, which I forwarded to her as directed. This place was a home of sorts, and now it is another’s.
We scramble up the steep, clammy stairs into the trench. The night air is soft and warm; stars are coming out. Round the traverse where the thirteen-pounder lies concealed, the gun-detachment is waiting for me. I raise the camouflage to take one last look at the brave little piece; then I’m tempted to enter and to place my hand upon the
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