"Naturally the Huns were riled. You see, we was a salient and they was a salient, and there wasn't more than a hundred yards between us. We could hear them eating quite plainly, when they had anything to eat, and when they hadn't they smoked cigars which smelt worse than all the gas they ever squirted. One day the Sub. strolls up for his morning practice and sees a huge sign above the enemy trench: 'Don't shoot. We are Saxons.' They had relieved the Prussians and they was moving about above their trenches as free as a Band of Hope Saturday excursion.
"'Until anyone proves the contrary,' says our Sub., 'I maintain that Saxons is Germans.' Moreover, says he, 'war is war,' and he had to cut up three more notches on his post afore he could make them understand that his attitude was hostile. When they did grasp it they began to strafe us, and they kep' it up hard all day. When night come our Sub. decided he'd had enough. 'Boys,' he says to us, 'one hour before the crimson sun shoots forth his flaming rays from out of the glowing East them Germans is going to be shifted from that trench. We ain't a-going to make a frontal attack,' he says, 'because some of us might have the misfortune to tear our tunics on the enemy entanglements, and housewives is scarce. We are going to crawl along that hollow on the flank and enfilade the blighters.'
"So we puts a final polish on our bainets and waits. Bimeby we starts out, Sergeant leading the way. We wriggled through the mud like Wapping eels at low tide for the best part of an hour, and at last we got to their trench and halted to listen. There wasn't a sound to be heard; nobody snoring, nobody babbling of beer in his sleep; only absolute silence. Sergeant was lying next to me and I distinctly heard his heart miss several beats. Then all at once we leaps into the air, gives a yell fit to make any German wish he'd never been born, and falls into their trench, doing bainet drill like it would have done your heart good to see. But we stops it as quick as we begun, because there wasn't a single man in that trench. Not one, Sir.
"After a awkward pause, 'The birds have flown,' says our Sub., sorrowful like, as if he'd asked some friends to dinner and the cat had eat the meat.
"'I think, Sir,' says Sergeant, 'that they've abandoned this trench as being untenable, and probably left a few mines behind for us.' I didn't like that. I thought our trench was a much nicer trench in every way, and I felt it was time to think of going back, when suddenly we hears a norrible yell come up from our trench and sounds of blokes jumping about. Yes, Sir, the Germans had made an attack on our trench at the same time, only they had gone round by the other flank, where there was some trees to help them.
"So there they was in our trench, and we in theirs, and dawn just beginning to break. There was only one thing to do. We went back, hoping they would wait for us; but they hopped it quick, same way as they come, and so we finished up just as we was when we started, except for mud. Our Sub. was wild with rage, and he hustled about all the morning looking for defaulters, his face as black as the Kayser's soul; and he even went so far as to curse a Machine Gun Section, which shows you better than words what he felt like. D Company, when they come to relieve us, wouldn't believe a word of it, not till I told them. They had to then, because they knew what my name was. James, Sir, and Truthful as a sort of appendix."
"And there were others, of course, to corroborate your story?"
"To what, Sir?"
"To swear to the truth of it?"
"Oh yes. They swore to it all right. Again and again. But that was nothing to what happened in the same trench when we come back from billets. It was like this here. Our Sub.... What's that you say, Bill?" He broke off. "Time for visitors to leave?"