"Me and Stoner 'as got 'ardly nuffink," Bill said.
"How much have you got?" asked the officer.
"You could 'ardly see it, it's so small," said Bill. "But now it's all gone."
"Gone?"
"A fly flew away with my portion, and Stoner's 'as fallen through the neck of 'is waterbottle," said Bill. The officer ordered both men to be served out with a second portion.
We left the village in the morning and marched for the best part of the day. We were going to hold a trench five kilometres north of Souchez and the Hills of Lorette. The trenches to which we were going had recently been held by the French but now that portion of the line is British; our soldiers fight side by side with the French on the Hills of Lorette at present.
The day was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty minutes. We passed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous path across a wide field, in the middle of which are several shell-shattered huts and some acres of shell-scooped ground. The place was once held by a French battery and a spy gave the position away to the enemy. Early one morning the shells began to sweep in, carrying the message of death from guns miles away. Never have I seen such a memento of splendid gunnery, as that written large in shell-holes on that field. The bomb-proof shelters are on a level with the ground, the vicinity is pitted as if with smallpox, but two hundred yards out on any side there is not a trace of a shell, every shot went true to the mark. A man with a rifle two hundred yards away could not be much more certain than the German gunners of a target as large. But their work went for nothing: the battery had changed its position the night previous to the attack. Had it remained there neither man nor gun would have escaped.
The communication trench we found to be one of the widest we had ever seen; a handbarrow could have been wheeled along the floor. At several points the trench was roofed with heavy pit-props and sandbags proof against any shrapnel fire. It was an easy trench to march in, and we needed all the ease possible. The sweat poured from every pore, down our faces, our arms and legs, our packs seemed filled with lead, our haversacks rubbing against our hips felt like sand paper; the whole march was a nightmare. The water we carried got hot in our bottles and became almost undrinkable. In the reserve trench we got some tea, a godsend to us all.
We had just stepped into a long, dark, pit-prop-roofed tunnel and the light of the outer world made us blind. I shuffled up against a man who was sitting on one side, righted myself and stumbled against the knees of another who sat on a seat opposite.
"Will ye have a wee drop of tay, my man?" a voice asked, an Irish voice, a voice that breathed of the North of Ireland. I tried to see things, but could not. I rubbed my eyes and had a vision of an arm stretching towards me; a hand and a mess tin. I drank the tea greedily.