hip of the Desert" of mine, past all the same landmarks, cracked
houses, windmills, estaminets, etc. I experienced innumerable tense
moments when my horse--as frequently happened--took me for a bit of a
circular tour in an adjacent field, so as to avoid some colossal motor
lorry with one headlight of about a million candle-power, which would
suddenly roar its way down our single narrow road. At last we got to the
dumping-ground spot again--the spot where we horsemen have to come to
earth and walk, and where everything is unbaled from the limbers. Here
we were again, on the threshold of the trenches.

This monotonous dreary routine of "in" and "out" of the trenches had to
be gone through many, many times before we got to Christmas Day. But,
during that pre-Christmas period, there was one outstanding feature
above the normal dangerous dreariness of the trenches: that was a slight
affair in the nature of our attack on the 18th of December, so in the
next chapter I will proceed to outline my part in this passage of arms.

CHAPTER VII

A PROJECTED ATTACK---DIGGING A SAP--
AN 'ELL OF A NIGHT--THE ATTACK--
PUNCTURING PRUSSIANS

[Illustration: O]

One evening I was sitting, coiled up in the slime at the bottom of my
dug-out, toying with the mud enveloping my boots, when a head appeared
at a gap in my mackintosh doorway and said, "The Colonel wants to see
you, sir." So I clambered out and went across the field, down a trench,
across a road and down a trench again to where the headquarter dug-outs
lay all in a row.

I came to the Colonel's dug-out, where, by the light of a candle-end
stuck on an improvised table, he was sitting, busily explaining
something by the aid of a map to a group of our officers. I waited till
he had finished, knowing that he would want to see me after the others,
as the machine-gunner's job is always rather a specialized side-line.
Soon he explained to me what he wished me to do with my guns, and gave
me a rough outline of the projected attack. He pointed out on the map
where he wished me to take up positions, and closed the interview by
saying that he thought I should at once proceed to reconnoitre the
proposed sites, and lay all my plans for getting into position, as we
were going to conduct an operation on the Boches at dawn the next day.

I left, and started at once on my plans. The first thing was to have a
thorough good look at the ground, and examine all the possibilities for
effec