Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/479

Cross-examining Counsel. "Now, my lad, be very careful. You have stated that you saw the hay-rick on fire, and that, five minutes afterwards, you saw 'Beefy' Saunders riding his bicycle along the Petersfield Road. Now, there are two brothers Saunders, Harry and Alfred, aged 17 and 16 respectively. When you say 'Beefy Saunders,' which of the Brothers Saunders do you mean?"

Witness. "'Im wiv a ghastly break from the orf."

My dear Charles,—It is now 2 A.M., an hour which I hope never to meet again when this business is ended; the rifles have quieted down, and both sides have abandoned, temporarily, the bellicose for the comatose attitude. I have just been leaning over the parapet contemplating in the moonlight that turnip field which separates us from our learned friends opposite, and is, in solid fact, an integral part of that thick black line of your newspaper maps, always so important-looking but so "approximate only." If turnip fields were capable of emotion this one would be filled with pride at the moment. For generations it has been unnoticed and insignificant; its own tenant farmer may have been aware of its existence, but no one else probably knew or cared anything about it. And now there are some thousands of us whose whole attention, anxiety, enthusiasms, hopes and fears are concentrated on nothing else. It is sacred ground, on no account to be trodden on and hardly to be looked at by day, and even in the dead of night only to be crept over with the utmost diffidence and respect. We have sat on our respective edges of it for weeks, never taking our periscopes off it and reporting, as a matter of suspicion, the growth of every plant in it; and at the broken down old cart which stands in the middle of it we have shot a hundred times (and so, no doubt, have they) as at a bold but crafty assailant. Yesterday afternoon the field resumed, for minute, some of its natural use. It was the after-lunch siesta; things were as peaceful as things can be in war; the sun shone and no sounds were heard except the casting of tinned-meat tins over the parapet—a form of untidiness, Charles, which Headquarter Staffs may rail against but are unable to check personally. Suddenly the air was rent by the splutter of "three rounds rapid" from the English trench on our left. From my dug-out I heard, with grave anxiety, the firing being taken up by our own company; I was out and at the parapet just in time to see the solitary hare fall to the rifles of the company on our right. The man who has just slipped over into the forbidden area and recovered the corpse, is, I take it, some retriever.

Our predominant feeling is intense curiosity as to what exactly is happening behind those black-and-white sandbags over the way. Are the Germans at this moment paraded there, being harangued by their officers before the attack, or are ninety per cent. of them asleep and the other ten per cent. unmistakably yawning? Does the spiral of blue smoke ascending to heaven indicate a deadly gas manufacture or the warming up of a meat and vegetable ration? Are there ten thousand Germans there or ten? Are there, we ask ourselves testily after the long periods of inactivity which sometimes occur, are there any Germans there at all? One of my men writes naïvely to his sweetheart: "There's millions of Germans here but they's all behind bags." On the other hand, Lieut. Tolley, whose dashing spirits demand an attack, contends that the whole line opposing us has been deserted by the soldiery and is now held by a caretaker and his wife, the caretaker doing the occasional shooting, while his wife sends up the flare lights.

I write spasmodically between my rounds; I have just been questioning a sentry as to the formalities of his job. For instance, it is of the first importance that he should say, on the approach of the Brigadier, "No. 1 Post. All