Imagine a cold November night--with a ground fog. What bliss to be roused from a snug dug-out at midnight, and patrol the Company’s line for four interminable hours. It is deathly quiet. Has the war stopped? I stand up on the fire-step beside the sentry and try to see through the fog. ‘Pip-pip-pip-pip-pip’ goes a machine-gun. So the war’s still on.
‘Cold?’ I ask a sentry. ‘Only me feet, sir.’ ‘Why don’t you stamp your feet, then?’ This being equivalent to an order, Tommy stamps feebly a few times until made to do so energetically. Unless you _make_ him stamp, he will not stamp; would infinitely prefer to let his feet get cold as ice. Of course, when you have gone into the next bay, he immediately stops. Still, that is Tommy.
I gaze across into No Man’s Land. I can just see our wire, and in front a collection of old tins--bully tins, jam tins, butter tins--paper, old bits of equipment. Other regiments always leave places so untidy. You clean up, but when you come into trenches you find the other fellows have left things about. You work hard repairing the trenches: the relieving regiment, you find on your return, has done ‘damn all,’ which is military slang for ‘nothing.’ And all other regiments, it seems, have the same complaint.
‘Swish.’ A German flare rocket lights up everything. You see our trenches all along. Everything is as clear as day. You feel as conspicuous as a cromlech on a hill. But the enemy can’t see you, fog or no fog, if you only keep still. The light has fallen on the parapet this time, and lies sizzling on the sand-bags. A flicker, and it is gone; and in the fog you see black blobs, the size and shape of the dazzling light you’ve just been staring at.
‘Crack--plop.’ ‘Crack--plop.’ A couple of bullets bury themselves in the sand-bags, or else with a long-drawn ‘ping’ go singing over the top. Why the sentries never get hit seems extraordinary. I suppose a mathematician would by combination and permutation tell you the chances against bullets aimed ‘at a venture’ hitting sentries exposing one-fourth of their persons at a given elevation at so many paces interval. Personally I won’t try, as my whole object is to keep awake till four o’clock. And then I shall be too sleepy. Only remember, it is night and the sentries are invisible.