THE JUNIOR PARTNERS.
Ferdie. "THINGS SEEM TO BE AT A STANDSTILL IN MY DEPARTMENT."
Sultan. "I ONLY WISH I COULD SAY THE SAME OF MINE."
AT THE FRONT.
I wonder if the chap who first thought out this shell business realized the extraordinary inconvenience it would cause to gentlemen at rest during what the Photographic Press alludes to as "a lull in the fighting."
Once upon a time billets were billets. You came into such, and thereafter for a spell of days forgot about the War unless you got an odd shell into the kitchen. But now—well, about noon on the first day's rest, seventy odd batteries of our 12, 16, and 24 inch guns set about their daily task of touching up a selected target, say a sap-head or something new from Unter den Linden in spring barbed-wirings which has been puzzling a patrol. This is all right in its way; but the Hun still owns one or two guns opposite us. And by 12.5 all is unquiet on the Western Front. This is all right in its way; but about 3 P.M. the Hun is roused to the depths of his savage nature, and one wakes up to find Hildebrand and Hoffelbuster, the two guns told off to attend to our liberty area, scattering missiles far and wide, but mostly wide, and a covey of aeroplanes bombing the local cabbageries. This again is all right in its way, but in the meantime the mutual noise further up the line has become so loud that Someone very far back and high up catches the echo of it, and a bare hour later we receive the order to stand-to at once, ready to move off twenty minutes ago.
Within three minutes of our first stand-to I was up with the company, hastily but adequately mobilized with my servant's rifle, five smoke helmets, (I took all I could see; this is camaraderie), a biscuit, the Indispensable Military Pocket Book (8 in. by 10 in.), a revolver (disqualified for military uses owing to absence of ammunition), Russian Picture Tales, and a tooth-brush. I find a general opinion prevalent in the company that "if Fritz knew we was standing-to 'e'd pack in." Word must have come through to Fritz somehow, for he shortly packs in—say about 1 A.M.—and we follow suit after the news has spent a couple or hours or so flashing round the wires in search of us. And we go to sleep until to-morrow midday, when the day's play begins again.