Peter slid, feet first, into cavernous darkness. A hand gripped him by the shoulder; helped him up. A voice said “Hello. Who are you?”

“Gunner Liaison Officer, sir.”

Darkness cleared to half light. Peter was aware of a man sitting over a map at an uncleanly table.

“Well, if you’d come from the door we might see something of you.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Peter shifted position; found himself in a square cave of concrete. The orderly who had helped him arrive, grinned; proffered an ammunition-box. An R.A.M.C. officer emerged from the gloom; said “Good morning.”

“I dunno what they send you chaps out for”—began the Infantry Colonel, a wiry resolute man, square of chin and square of forehead—“you can’t do anything. How do you propose getting your messages back?”

“Runner to beyond TrÔnes Wood, sir. Then telephone.”

“Hm. We can do as well as that ourselves. What’s the use of information two hours old? These new creeping barrages are the very devil. No stopping ’em once they start. Where are you going to observe from?”

Peter told him; and they discussed details for ten minutes. The Colonel’s servant brought him tea.

“Have some?” asked the Colonel.

Peter, wet through and shivering, accepted gratefully. Asked the doctor, watching him as he drank: “Do you go over the top with the first attack?”

“He’s supposed to come with me,” interrupted the Colonel. Then to Peter: “You’d rather be on your own I expect.”

“I think so, sir.”

“Right”—the Colonel dabbed a finger at the map—“I shall make for here. Join me if you can. I must be off now. It’ll take me the best part of an hour to go round the front line.” He took his helmet from the wall behind him; gripped a stout stick; and scrambled off up the mud-chute.

“Shouldn’t like your job much,” commented the doctor.

“Shouldn’t like his,” observed Peter; looking at the disappearing soles of the Colonel’s boots....

By now it was nearly nine o’clock. Above, all seemed quiet. Peter finished his tea; said au revoir to the doctor; hauled himself—breast on mud—into the upper air again; found Finlayson and Mucksweat waiting in the narrow mud-floored trench from which he had elected to observe; rested elbows on parapet; peered cautiously over.

Immediately beneath him a smashed railway-line curved northwards, ending in the heap of twisted metal, upcurved like the ribs of a skeleton horse, which had been Guillemont Station. Over the railway, straight to his front, bare ground dipped to green—cut by the narrow brown cleft of our own front line. Beyond this, four hundred yards away, great molehills of white chalk marked the enemy’s position. But between the narrow brown cleft and the white molehills, lay the sunken road which had so often defied assault. At that distance it was hardly visible; showed only as a discolouration on the drab landscape—a discolouration which ended at skyline in the three-cornered bush-clump of Arrowhead Copse. Right of the Copse—our ground—rose the trees of TrÔnes Wood: left of it, beyond sunk road and white molehills, the enemy’s territory stretched in colourless desert tossed to occasional fountains by long-range shell-fire. Of what had been Guillemont village nothing showed except four tree-tops on the extreme left of the shell-tossed desert....

It still lacked two and a half hours to the time of the attack; and Peter, having shown the ground and explained his plans to the Bombardier and Mucksweat, sat down to wait.

Ten minutes passed—a quarter of an hour—twenty minutes. He looked at his watch, lit a cigar. Half-an-hour went by. Two hours more to wait! A couple of infantrymen appeared, took station beside him. Round the traverse, he could hear other infantrymen coming up. Damn it, would the time never pass? ... Very high overhead, five Hun machines planed gleaming across gray sky.... He began to be afraid.... Fear gripped his stomach.... He must look over again, make sure of his way to those white molehills. ... Twenty past ten—a whole miserable hour and forty-three wretched minutes more....

Suddenly, the first enemy shell howled across the sky, burst hollowly at the edge of TrÔnes Wood.

“Dommned if that one didn’t come from behind us,” ejaculated Mucksweat.

“Pretty well,” said the Bombardier calmly. “Often got ’em that way in the Salient, didn’t you? ... Course you did.... Well, this is a salient too, see!”

“I see,” said the huge hairy man. Even while he spoke, the second shell screamed and lit crashing to the ground behind. Splinters whizzed over them as they crouched to cover.

Barrage fire began—a slow barrage, terrifying in its very deliberateness. Scream followed scream down the unchanging sky; crash followed crash—now right of them, now left, now directly behind. Only their own tiny portion of trench, the sodden mud-walls between which they huddled under whirling splinters, seemed immune—burrow of safety in an exploding world.

“Christ!” thought Peter, “how long can this go on?” For a second, he knew absolute panic; his legs wanted to run away with him; he couldn’t stick it, couldn’t stick it another minute. Came a pause in the crash of sound.

Peter looked at the two infantrymen, crouching white-faced below the parapet; at Finlayson, tight-lipped, apprehensive; at Mucksweat biting his huge moustache. Then, very deliberately, he stood upright; drew field-glasses from case; peered over towards the enemy. One of the infantrymen joined him. “Do you know the ground?” began Peter....

The shell gave no warning. He was aware only of a terrific thunder-clap, of a savage boot-hack at ear-drum.... Then blackness, blackness through which he struggled for light.... In the slime he struggled, fighting a warm dead thing.... The thing lifted from him.... Light came back.... He felt hands gripping him; heard Mucksweat’s voice.

Face down in the slime, lay the dead body of the infantryman, helmetless, brains oozing—crimson sweet-breads—from shattered skull. Above the body, bent its living mate—the second infantryman. Suddenly, he turned; snarled over his shoulder: “You killed him, damn you. You! You! You! You bastard.”

“Easy on, mate,” cut in the voice of Finlayson, “you’re talking to an officer.”

“Officer. Who the hell cares for ’tillery officers?”—the man rose, sworded rifle gripped in both hands. “Blast you. You killed him. And now you’ll bloody well bury him”—bayonet drew back for the plunge. “Come on, you bloody coward, you. We’re going over the top, you and me—going to bury my mate decent, we are—like a Christian.”

Said Peter, and he spoke as tired men speak in dreams: “Don’t make an ass of yourself, lad.”

Mucksweat’s doubled fist crashed home to chin-point. The madman’s rifle fell clattering across his mate’s body as he toppled backwards.

“Who the devil told you to do that?”—Peter’s voice was again the voice of command—“pick him up, will you?”—the bear stooped over his victim—“take his helmet off.” ...

But already the infantryman had regained consciousness. “What happened, sir?” he asked: head on the coalminer’s knee. Then he saw the body on the ground; stared at it.

“Oh, Gawd,” he sobbed, “it’s Harry. Poor old Harry.” Swiftly the man rose to his feet; picked up his rifle; started to climb out of the trench. Mucksweat pulled him back. “Let me go,” he howled, “let me go. I’ll give ’em something for this. Christ, I’ll give ’em something they won’t forget.”

They wrestled with him, panting, there in the trench; fought him till the madness passed. Shells screamed and crashed about them as they wrestled; splinters hissed into the slime. But for the moment these four had forgotten shell-fire....

Came a man through the mud, a man who shouted, “Artillery Liaison Officer. Colonel wants the Artillery Liaison Officer.”

Automatically, Peter staggered off round the traverse. A shell screamed down. He fell on his face; heard the splinters whizz over; picked himself up; saw the exploded S. O. S. rockets frizzling red and useless among a knot of crouching stretcher-bearers. Then he was slithering down the mud-chute, slithering to a moment’s safety.