"No, the old professor's the one that walks along at night sending up flares!"
"Munching K.K. bread with his false teeth!"
"And singing the hymn of hate!"
Thus the talk ran on in the quiet of evening, till we heard a concussion and a quarter of a mile away, behind a screen of trees, a pillar of smoke rose to the height of two or three hundred feet.
"A mine!" In front of the -th brigade!"
"Ours or the Boches'?"
"Ours, from the way the smoke went—our fuse!"
"No, theirs!"
Our colonel telephoned down to know if we knew whose mine it was, which was the question we wanted to ask him. The guns from both sides became busy under the column of smoke. Oh, yes, there were Germans in the trenches which had appeared vacant. Their shots and ours merged in the hissing medley of a tempest.
"Not enough guns—not enough noise for an attack!" said experienced
Tommy, who knew what an attack was like.