ts.

Still in the same old trench clothes, with a goodly quantity of Flanders
mud attached, I walked into Paddington station, and collared a seat in
the train on Number 1 platform. Then, collecting a quantity of papers
and magazines from the bookstalls, I prepared myself for enjoying to the
full the two hours' journey down home.

I spent a gorgeous week in Warwickshire, during which time my friend
came along down to stay a couple of days with me, bringing my missing
pack along with him. He had had the joy of carrying it laden with shell
cases across London, and taking it down with him to somewhere near
Aldershot, and finally bringing it to me without having kept any of the
contents ... Such is a true friend.

As this book deals with my wanderings in France I will not go into
details of my happy seven days' leave. I now resume at the point where I
was due to return to France. In spite of the joys of England as opposed
to life in Flanders, yet a curious phenomenon presented itself at the
end of my leave. I was anxious to get back. Strange, but true. Somehow
one felt that slogging away out in the dismal fields of war was the real
thing to do. If some one had offered me a nice, safe, comfortable job in
England, I wouldn't have taken it. I claim no credit for this feeling of
mine. I know every one has the same. That buccaneering, rough and tumble
life out there has its attractions. The spirit of adventure is in most
people, and the desire and will to biff the Boches is in every one, so
there you are.

I drifted back via London, Dover and Boulogne, and thence up the same
old stagnant line to Creme de Menthe. Once more back in the land of mud,
bullets, billets, and star shells.

It was the greyest of grey days when I arrived at my one-horse terminus.
I got out at the "station," and had a solitary walk along the empty,
muddy lanes, back to the Transport Farm.

Plodding along in the thin rain that was falling I thought of home,
London, England, and then of the job before me. Another three months at
least before any further chance of leave could come my way again.
Evening was coming on. Across the flat, sombre country I could see the
tall, swaying poplar trees standing near the farm. Beyond lay the rough
and rugged road which led to the Douve trenches.

How nice that leave had been! To-morrow night I should be going along
back to the trenches before Wulverghem.

CHAPTER XXI

BACK FROM LEAVE--THAT "BLINKIN' MO