In that flimsy tin-roofed tunnel, hidden away in mud between brick walls, glass-doored at each end, perpetually illumined with guttering candles, Peter spent three days and three nights. Incredible things happened in that tunnel: equally incredible things in the farm above. Our own howitzers shook it till the glass-doors rattled to splinters: shells, screaming down out of nowhere, missed it by inches, plunging visibly through the shattered roof of the farm, extinguishing candles, shattering telephone wires. Men came to it—all sorts and conditions of men: orderlies and Generals, Colonels and battery commanders. Guardsmen, dizzy with shell-fumes, staggered down its steps, were given gas-capsules, departed. Murchison the Brigade Major came to it, sojourned with them two days. A weary officer of the Third Southdown Brigade, who had been shelled out of his position with the loss of two guns and twenty men, dropped down on its muddy floor and slept like a dog, cap under head, in his spurred field-boots.

And always, Peter—in the dark forward compartment—sat by the telephone operator. Men were blown to bits above—(there were one hundred and twenty casualties in Le Rutoire during those three days): orderlies, sent out on cycles, failed to report, were never again heard of: men died at the batteries even as he spoke to the batteries: the farm rocked: lights went out: shelling stopped: shelling began again. But always, Peter Jameson was trying to explain over a wire which either carried four different voices or went absolutely dead, that Colonel Stark wanted fire directed here, that the Coldstreams reported two field-guns 200 yards South West of Metallurgique tower firing on G 24, that the Bois Hugo was full of M.G’s, that if Major Lethbridge couldn’t fire with A Battery, because A battery had three guns out of action, he must fire with B....

The world-famous attack on Hill 70, when the Guards went over the top, (“By the right,” as the unemotional Pettigrew reported afterwards, “just as if there hadn’t been a Boche within miles of them”) resolved itself for P.J. into a jumble of buzzes, translated to scribbled message-forms, a pile of scribbled message-forms, translated to buzzes. (For by that time, speech on the majority of the sodden lines had become impossible.)...

By late afternoon of the twenty-ninth, when the most incredible occurrence of all took place, Peter—still sitting at the telephone,—was too weary to appreciate it.

It had been a baddish day. Fosse Eight seemed by the accuracy of the hostile shell-fire, to have fallen at last. Major Lethbridge reported twelve guns of his sixteen now out of action, the remaining four being pushed up by hand owing to buffer troubles. Third Brigade wires refused to act. They had run out of whisky. A five-nine shell had missed the bomb-store wherein the servants and the orderlies slept by two feet; killing a horse and wounding three men. Murchison slept. The Colonel, just returned from visiting the Infantry Brigadier in his dug-out across the road, had found the Brigadier absent; tripped in a sodden trench; looked like a scare-crow; was swearing like a fish-fag.... At which precise moment, “Royalty” appeared in the tunnel!

“Royalty,” represented by a jolly fair-haired youngster in a darkish rain-coat, followed the missing Infantry Brigadier past the telephone shelf where Peter sat, into the rear part of the tunnel. Murchison, miraculously awaking, and the Weasel, with his tunic off, stood up and said “Sir.”

Peter, who imagined them to be greeting the Brigadier, found a dark-moustached young man beside him.

Whispered the dark-moustached young man, taking Peter’s knowledge for granted: “I’d rather be a Tommy in the front line than have to look after him. Once the Guards are in the trenches, we can’t keep him away from them. He ran away from G.H.Q. this morning, and he’s insisted on tramping all round the front line. He enjoys it. I don’t! It isn’t right, you know. It really isn’t. He might remember that he’s the heir to the throne. Don’t you think so?”

Peter, realizing the jolly fair-haired youngster to be the Prince of Wales, whispered agreement. The conference in rear of the tunnel broke up.

“Thank goodness he’s going,” whispered Peter’s companion. “This job will turn my hair gray.”

The three passed out through the shattered glass-door; up mud-steps into the farm.... Very far away, Peter heard a low whistle, a whistle that rose to a high-pitched scream, seemed to surge up the skies. Interminably they waited; penned in the dusk. Impotent! Down upon them, faster and faster, shrieking and howling, rushed noise.... They were deaf.... The tunnel staggered.... Light disappeared. ... Glass tinkled about them.... Things thudded from walls to floor.... Noise stopped.... Peter heard the Weasel’s voice: “Good God, I hope that didn’t get him”: saw a shadow stumble up the steps. They waited—interminably. Murchison’s voice called: “It’s all right, Colonel.” ...

“Will you please speak to Mr. Purves, sir?” asked the unconcerned operator at the telephone.