(Here, then, in addition to the description of a dug-out, you have a portrait of your "Temporary Gentleman," rather unmercifully touched in, I thought!)
"The table—say, 30 inches by 20 inches—was made from a packing-case, and is perched on rough stake legs against the earthen side of the dug-out, with a shelf over it which was formerly a case holding two jars of rum. On the shelf are foodstuffs, Very lights, a couple of rockets, a knobkerrie, a copy of Punch, a shortbread tin full of candles, a map, an automatic pistol, and, most curiously, a dust-encrusted French cookery-book, which has taken on the qualities of an antique, and become a kind of landlord's fixture among 'trench stores' in the eyes of the ever-changing succession of company commanders who have 'taken over,' week in and week out, since the French occupation in '14.
"Hung about the sides of the dug-out are half-empty canvas packs or valises, field-glasses, a couple of periscopes, a Very pistol, two sticks caked all over with dry mud, an oilskin coat or two similarly varnished over with the all-pervading mud of the trench, a steel helmet, a couple of pairs of field boots and half a dozen pictures from illustrated papers, including one clever drawing of a grinning cat, having under it the legend, 'Smile, damn you!' The field boots are there, and not in use, because the weather is of the prevalent sort, wet, and the tenants of the place are living in what the returns call 'boots, trench, gum, thigh.' Overhead is stretched across the low roof tarred felt. Above that are rough-hewn logs, then galvanised iron and stones and earth: not shell-proof, really, but bullet- and splinter-proof, and for the most part weather-proof—at least as much so as the average coat sold under that description.
"The trench outside is very still just now, but inside the dug-out there is plenty of movement. All round about it, and above and below, the place is honeycombed by rats—brown rats with whitish bellies, big as young cats, heavy with good living; blundering, happy-go-lucky, fearless brutes, who do not bother to hunt the infinitely nimbler mice who at this moment are delicately investigating the tins of foodstuffs within a few inches of the head of the O.C. Company. The rats are variously occupied: as to a couple of them, matrons, in opposite corners of the roof, very obviously in suckling their young, who feed with awful zest; as to half a dozen others, in courting, during which process they keep up a curious kind of crooning, chirruping song wearisome to human ears; and as to the numerous remainder, in conducting a cross-country steeplechase of sorts, to and fro and round and round on the top side of the roofing felt, which their heavy bodies cause to bulge and sag till one fancies it must give way.
"There is a rough rickety stool beside the table. On this is seated the O.C. Company, his arms outspread on the little ledge of a table, his head on his arms, his face resting on the pages of an open Army Book 153, in which, half an hour ago, he wrote his morning situation report, in order that his signallers might inform Battalion Headquarters, nearly a mile away down the communication trench to the rear, with sundry details, that there was nothing doing beyond the normal intermittent strafing of a quiet night. The O.C. Company is asleep. A mouse is clearing its whiskers of condensed milk within two inches of his left ear, and the candle is guttering within two inches of his cap-peak. During the past few days he has had four or five such sleeps as this, half an hour or so at a time, and no more, for there has been work toward in the line, involving exposure for men on the parapet and so forth, of a sort which does not make for restfulness among O.C. Companies.
"There comes a quiet sound of footfalls on the greasy duck-boards outside. Two mice on the table sit bolt upright to listen. The cross-country meeting overhead is temporarily suspended. The O.C. Company's oilskin-covered shoulders twitch nervously. The mother rats continue noisily suckling their young, though one warily pokes its sharp nose out over the edge of the felt, sniffing, inquiringly. Then the waterproof sheet is drawn aside, and the O.C. Company sits up with a jerk. A signaller on whose leather jerkin the raindrops glisten in the flickering candle-light thrusts head and shoulders into the dug-out.
"'Message from the Adjutant, sir!'
"The O.C. reads the two-line message, initials the top copy for return to the signaller, spikes the carbon copy on a nail overhead, where many others hang, glances at his wrist-watch, and says wearily:
"'Well, what are the signallers strafing about, anyhow? It's ten minutes before time now. Here you are!'
"He tears two written pages from the Army message book which was his pillow, signs them, and hands them up to the signaller.