Produced by Edward Johnson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
1916
to whose recognition and appreciation of my work, and to whose instantand eager hospitality in the "Westminster Gazette" so much of these warwritings is due, this book is very gratefully dedicated by
I make no apology for having followed in this book the same plan as inmy other one, "Between the Lines," of taking extracts from the officialdespatches as "texts" and endeavoring to show something of what thesebrief messages cover, because so many of my own friends, and so manymore unknown friends amongst the reviewers, expressed themselves sopleased with the plan that I feel its repetition is justified.
There were some who complained that my last book was in parts too grimand too terrible, and no doubt the same complaint may lie against thisone. To that I can only reply that I have found it impossible to writewith any truth of the Front without the writing being grim, and inwriting my other book I felt it would be no bad thing if Home realizedthe grimness a little better.
But now there are so many at Home whose nearest and dearest are in thetrenches, and who require no telling of the horrors of the war, that Ihave tried here to show there is a lighter side to war, to let themknow that we have our relaxations, and even find occasion for jests, inthe course of our business.
I believe, or at least hope, that in showing both sides of the pictureI am doing what the Front would wish me to do. And I don't ask for anygreater satisfaction than that.
May, 1916.
The last conscious thought in the mind of Private Jock Macalister as hereached the German trench was to get down into it; his next consciousthought to get out of it. Up there on the level there wereuncomfortably many bullets, and even as he leaped on the low parapetone of these struck the top of his forehead, ran deflecting over thecrown of his head, and away. He dropped limp as a pole-axed bullock,slid and rolled helplessly down into the trench.
When he came to his senses he found himself huddled in a corner againstthe traverse, his head smarting and a bruised elbow aching abominably.He lifted his head and groaned, and as the mists cleared from his dazedeyes he found himself looking into a fat and very dirty face and thering of a rifle muzzle about a foot from his head. The German saidsomething which Macalister could not understand, but which he rightlyinterpreted as a command not to move. But he could hear no sound ofScottish voices or of the uproar of hand-to-hand fighting in thetrench. When he saw the Germans duck down hastily and squeeze close upagainst the wall of the trench, while overhead a string of shellscrashed angrily and the shrapnel beat down in gusts across the trench,he diagnosed correctly that the assault had failed, and that theBritish gunners were again searching the Germ