For a while I struggled
bravely to keep to the tight-rope path, but it was useless, I fell
over first one side, then the other. Eventually I kept clear of it,
and walked in the slush of the field. Half way along a newly dug
trench, some three feet in depth, ran across my road; an attack was
feared at dawn, and a first line of reserves were in occupation. I
stumbled upon the men. They were sitting well down, their heads lower
than the parapet, and all seemed to be smoking if I could form (p. 167)
judgment by the line of little glow-worm fires, the lighted cigarette
ends that extended out on either hand. Somebody was humming a music-hall
song, while two or three of his mates helped him with the chorus.
"Halt! who goes there?"
The challenge was almost a whisper, and a bayonet slid out from the
trench and paused irresolutely near my stomach.
"A London Irish orderly going down to the village," I answered.
A voice other than that which challenged me spoke: "Why are you alone,
there should be two."
"I wasn't aware of that."
"Pass on," said the second voice, "and be careful, it's not altogether
healthy about here."
Somewhere in the proximity of the village I lost the brick path and
could not find it again. For a full hour I wandered over the sodden
fields under shell fire, discovering the village, a bulk of shadows
thinning into a jagged line of chimneys against the black sky when the
shells exploded, and losing it again when the darkness settled down
around me.
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