ench and crept in.

"Now, yer supposed to be asleep," said Shorty, and with that he gave me a
whack on the soles of my boots with his entrenching tool handle. I can
still feel the pain of the blow.

"Stand to! Wyke up 'ere! Stand to!" he shouted, and gave me another
resounding wallop.

I backed out in all haste.

"Get the idea? That's 'ow they wykes you up at stand-to, or w'en your
turn comes fer sentry. Not bad, wot?"

I said that it all depended on whether one was doing the waking or the
sleeping, and that, for my part, when sleeping, I would lie with my head
out.

"You wouldn't if you belonged to our lot. They'd give it to you on the
napper just as quick as 'it you on the feet. You ain't on to the game,
that's all. Let me show you suthin'."

He crept inside and drew his knees up to his chest so that his feet were
well out of reach. At his suggestion I tried to use the active service
alarm clock on him, but there was not room enough in which to wield it.
My feet were tingling from the effect of his blows, and I felt that the
reputation for resourcefulness of Kitchener's Mob was at stake. In a
moment of inspiration I seized my rifle, gave him a dig in the shins with
the butt, and shouted, "Stand to, Shorty!" He came out rubbing his leg
ruefully.

"You got the idea, mate," he said. "That's just wot they does w'en you
tries to double-cross 'em by pullin' yer feet in. I ain't sure w'ere I
likes it best, on the shins or on the feet."

This explanation of the reason for building three-sided dugouts, while
not, of course, the true one, was none the less interesting. And
certainly, the task of arousing sleeping men for sentry duty was greatly
facilitated with rows of protruding boot soles "simply arskin' to be
'it," as Shorty put it.

All of the dugouts for privates and N.C.O.s were of equal size and built
on the same model, the reason being that the walls and floors, which were
made of wood, and the roofs, which were of corrugated iron, were put
together in sections at the headquarters of the Royal Engineers, who
superintended all the work of trench construction. The material was
brought up at night ready to be fitted into excavations. Furthermore,
with thousands of men to house within a very limited area, space was a
most important consideration. There was no room for indulging individual
tastes in dugout architecture. The roofs were covered with from three to
four feet of earth, which made them proof against s