Old soldiers never die,
    They simply fade away.

—­a voice full of “fed-upness,” steeped in determination.

Then all would be silence for the next couple of hours, and so the day passed.

[Illustration:  The Knave of Spades.]

At dusk, my job was to emerge from this horrible drain and go round the various machine-gun positions.  What a job!  I generally went alone, and in the darkness struck out across the sodden field, tripping, stumbling, and sometimes falling into various shell holes on the way.

One does a little calling at this time of day.  Having seen a gun in another trench, one looks up the nearest platoon commander.  You look into so-and-so’s dug-out and find it empty.  You ask a sergeant where the occupant is.

“He’s down the trench, sir.”  You push your way down the trench, dodging pools of water and stepping over fire buckets, mess tins, brushing past men standing, leaning or sitting—­right on down the trench, where, round a corner, you find the platoon commander.  “Well, if we can’t get any sandbags,” he is probably saying to a sergeant, “we will just have to bank it up with earth, and put those men on the other side of the traverse,” or something like that.  He turns to me and says, “Come along back to my dug-out and have a bit of cake.  Someone or other has sent one out from home.”

We start back along the trench.  Suddenly a low murmuring, rattling sound can be heard in the distance.  We stop to listen, the sound gets louder; everyone stops to listen—­the sound approaches, and is now distinguishable as rifle-fire.  The firing becomes faster and faster; then suddenly swells into a roar and now comes the phenomenon of trench warfare:  “wind up”—­the prairie fire of the trenches.

Everyone stands to the parapet, and away on the left a tornado of crackling sound can be heard, getting louder and louder.  In a few seconds it has swept on down the line, and now a deafening rattle of rifle-fire is going on immediately in front.  Bullets are flicking the tops of the sandbags on the parapet in hundreds, whilst white streaks are shooting up with a swish into the sky and burst into bright radiating blobs of light—­the star shell at its best.

A curious thing, this “wind up.”  We never knew when it would come on.  It is caused entirely by nerves.  Perhaps an inquisitive Boche, somewhere a mile or two on the left, had thought he saw someone approaching his barbed wire; a few shots are exchanged—­a shout or two, followed by more shots—­panic—­more shots—­panic spreading—­then suddenly the whole line of trenches on a front of a couple of miles succumbs to that well-known malady, “wind up.”

In reality it is highly probable that there was no one in front near the wire, and no one has had the least intention of being there.

Presently there comes a deep “boom” from somewhere in the distance behind, and a large shell sails over our heads and explodes somewhere amongst the Boches; another and another, and then all becomes quiet again.  The rifle fire diminishes and soon ceases.  Total result of one of these firework displays:  several thousand rounds of ammunition squibbed off, hundreds of star shells wasted, and no casualties.