“Will you have a shot, sir?” one of the sentries asked me.
“At what?”
“Why, at the top of the trench over there, or at anything you see moving,” he said.
But I did not think that it was an invitation for a non-combatant to accept. If the bullet went over the top of the trench it had still two thousand yards and more to go, and it might find a target before it died. So, in view of the law of probabilities, no bullet is quite waste.
“Now, which is my house?” asked Captain P——. “I really can’t find my own home in the dark.”
Behind the breastwork were many little houses three or four feet in height, all of the same pattern, and made of boards and mud. The mud is put on top to keep out shrapnel bullets.
“Here you are, sir!” said a soldier.
Asking me to wait until he made a light, the captain bent over as if he were about to crawl under the top rail of a fence and his head disappeared. After he had put a match to a candle and stuck it on a stick thrust into the wall, I could see the interior of his habitation. A rubber sheet spread on the moist earth served as floor, carpet, mattress, and bed. At a squeeze there was room for two others besides himself. They did not need any doormat, for when they lay down their feet would be at the door.
“Quite cosy, don’t you think?” remarked the captain. He seemed to feel that he had a royal chamber. But, then, he was the kind of man who might sleep in a muddy field under a wagon and regard the shelter of the wagon body as a luxury. “Leave your knapsack here,” he continued, “and we’ll go and see what is doing along the line.”
In other words, after you had left your bag in the host’s hall, he suggested a stroll in the village or across the fields. But only to see war would he have asked you to walk in such mud.