Flanagan shouted "Stretcher bearers!" Then he turned to help his mate but even as he did so he felt a sudden penetrating pain pierce his own chin, and the wasp which was responsible for the sting flew off to a safe distance and poised itself in the air over the dug-out. Fitzgerald, knowing that it was contemplating another attack, prepared to retreat.
"It's wasps, Spudhole!" he yelled. "We'll clear off round the corner."
But before they moved Bowdy Benners rushed out of the dug-out, festooned with angry wasps.
"Good God!" he yelled, striking out with both hands. "I'm stung to death. My pillow was a nest of the swine! Git out, you vermin!... Got that one! Did I? He's stung my finger.... Oh! blast!..."
The three retreated at the double round the traverse and into the next bay. The occupants were just sitting down to breakfast, a good breakfast, for the post had come and parcels were bulky.
"Wot the blazes is this?" one of them exclaimed as the crush of men rounded the corner waving their arms about their heads. "These 'ere blokes are working their tickets, I suppose!"
He finished his remark with a yell, for an enterprising wasp had flown the rout and stung the speaker on the nose. Then the insect made the round of the breakfast party. A few fled instantly and escaped, others took to their heels at the first sting, but the man who waited to pick up the sultana cake and the tin of sardines had all the colours of a Board School map on his face for weeks afterwards.
A narrow, crooked trench infested by furious wasps is not a healthy locality. The insects outmanœuvred the soldiers at every turn. The men turned the third buttress feeling that they had escaped their persecutors only to find that the insects had crossed the top of the traverse and were in waiting round the corner. As a man runs a trench is a weary pathway, as a wasp flies it presents no difficulties.
The place was in an uproar. The wasps had attacked on both sides, some drove the men left, others flew after them on the right. In every bay their numbers seemed to have increased; at the traverse turning the soldiers eluded them for a moment only to encounter them in the next bay. A number of men sought safety in the dugouts; the wasps followed and drove them out into the perilous trench again. When the first officer was met he stood for a moment with one foot in the trench, one on the firestep, and stared in astonishment. His wonderment was short-lived. A wasp announced itself when it alighted on his ear, and immediately the subaltern became one with the rout.
Spudhole was now wounded in several places. The morning had been fine, and like the rest of his mates, he was in shirt-sleeves fighting order.