"Need a stretcher?"
"No."
Blythe came hobbling through the traverse to the communication trench, seeming well pleased with himself. The soft part of the leg is not a bad place to receive a bullet if one is due to hit you.
Night is always the time in the trenches when life grows more interesting and death more likely.
"It's dark enough, now," said one of the youngsters who was out on another scout. "We'll go out with the patrol."
By day, the slightest movement of the enemy is easily and instantly detected. Light keeps the combatants to the warrens which protect them from shell and bullet-fire. At night there is no telling what mischief the enemy may be up to; you must depend upon the ear rather than the eye for watching. Then the human soldier-fox comes out of his burrow and sneaks forth on the lookout for prey; both sides are on the prowl.
"Trained owls would be the most valuable scouts we could have," said the young officer. "They would be more useful than aeroplanes in locating the enemy's gun-positions. A properly reliable owl would come back and say that a German patrol was out in the wheatfield at such a point and a machine-gun would wipe out that patrol."
We turned into a side trench, an alley off the main street, leading out of the front trench toward the Germans.
"Anybody out?" he asked a soldier who was on guard at the end of it.
"Yes, two."