"I say, you fellows," he cried excitedly. "Here comes the General."
"Liar!" shouted someone. But the magic words could not be allowed to pass unnoticed, even though we were eating pineapple chunks at the time, and they are very sticky if you upset them over your clothes.
A fearful scramble took place, in which everyone—with the exception of Walters, who placed himself in the further corner with the tin of pineapple—tried to go together up steps which were just broad enough to allow the passage of one man at a time.
A conglomerate mass of officers, all clinging convulsively to each other, suddenly burst into the open trench—almost at the feet of the General, who came round the traverse into view of them at that moment.
When I returned to C Company's dug-out, an hour or so later, to try to recover my plate and anything else that had not been smashed, I found three officers reading a message that had just come by telephone from Battalion Headquarters. It was prefixed by the usual number of mysterious letters and figures and ran:
"The Brigadier has noticed with regret the tendency of several officers to crowd into one dug-out. This practice must cease. An officer should have his dug-out as near those of his own men as possible, and should not pass his time in the dug-outs belonging to officers of other companies."
"Here comes the General!" whispered somebody.
I got first up the steps and hurried, a battered plate in my hand, along the trenches to my dug-out.