Washed in warm water, the feet are greased and powdered and new socks placed carefully over before setting out on the trudge Linewards.
Trench equipment is issued, two days' rations served out, and a start is made in the night. Stumpy lost his "grub" by misadventure, but found somebody else's, withstood a fierce argument for ten minutes and finally pacified his opponent by "finding" still another issue.
Hoarse orders sent men probing about for their rifles and assortment of equipment.
XII
PASSCHENDAELE SECTOR
Eyes gazing eastward at the rising and falling Verey Lights in Jerry's lines, the Ten Hundred trudged wearily along a sodden plank "road" winding into a stretch of muddy track strewn on all sides with the gruesome conglomeration of war's jetsam.
The way had to be carefully chosen past shell-holes full of water, with here and there a slowly twirling body, a white face shining hideously in the damp night air. To the south a wavering mass of searchlights flitted over the sky. Archie guns were raising a fierce distant clamour, the white puffs from their bursting shrapnel showing like gigantic snowballs in the glare, but no trace of the Fritz airmen was visible. A series of violent concussions and the faint high-up throb of aero engines were the only indications of his gambols.
Then silent filing along a poor system of filthy trenches ... the other battalion was relieving. Posting of men, reliefs....
To stand there in the night, suffering acutely from the cold, unmoving, staring fascinated across the little stretch of desolation between the lines and to watch fanciful shadows until the mind falls prey to apprehensive imagination construing the posts and wiring into great fantastic grey-cloaked figures. Then at the turn of the head—WHAT is that? In one frenzied movement the rifle is levelled across the parapet, first pressure of the trigger taken and the shadowy bulk watched. Five long minutes of intense scrutiny—it MOVED, or was it mere fancy? There again—crack!! And the figure has not fallen ... so through the darkness, until day reveals a shrivelled form tangled up on the wire where it died days ago.