"'Oo's there?" Bill called up out of the darkness, and when I spoke he
muttered:
"Oh, it's ole Pat! Where were yer?"
"I've been out for a walk," I replied.
"When that shellin' was goin' on?"
"Yes."
"You're a cool beggar, you are!" said Bill. "I was warm here I tell
yer!"
"Have the Germans come this way?" I asked.
"Germans!" ejaculated Bill. "They come 'ere and me with ten rounds in
the magazine and one in the breech! They knows better!"
Stoner was awake when I returned to the dug-out by Headquarters.
"Up already?" I asked.
"Up! I've been up almost since you went away," he answered. "My! the
shells didn't half fly over here. And I thought you'd never get (p. 174)
back."
"That's due to lack of imagination," I told him. "What's for
breakfast?"
CHAPTER XIII (p. 175)
A NIGHT OF HORROR
'Tis only a dream in the trenches,
Told when the shadows creep,
Over the friendly sandbags
When men in the dug-outs sleep.
This is the tale of the trenches
Told when the shadows fall,
By little Hughie of Dooran,
Over from Donegal.
On the noon following the journey to the village I was sent back to
the Keep; that night our company went into the firing trench again. We
were all pleased to get there; any place was preferable to the block
of buildings in which we had lost so many of our boys. On the night
after our departure, two Engineers who were working at the Keep could
not find sleeping place in the dug-outs, and they slept on the spot
where I made my bed the first night I was there.
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