be aware that when we go out on service only three things will really
count--to march; to dig; and to fire, upon occasion, fifteen rounds
a minute. Our rapid fire is already fair; we can march more than a
little; and if men who have been excavating the bowels of the earth
for eight hours a day ever since they were old enough to swing a pick
cannot make short work of a Hampshire chalk down, they are no true
members of their Trades Union or the First Hundred Thousand.

We have stuck to the phraseology of our old calling.

"Whaur's ma drawer?" inquires Private Hogg, a thick-set young man with
bandy legs, wiping his countenance with a much-tattooed arm. He
has just completed five strenuous minutes with a pick. "Come away,
Geordie, wi' yon shovel!"

The shovel is preceded by an adjective. It is the only adjective that
A Company knows. (No, not that one. The second on the list!)

Mr. George Ogg steps down into the breach, and sets to work. He is a
small man, strongly resembling the Emperor of China in a third-rate
provincial pantomime. His weapon is the spade. In civil life he would
have shovelled the broken coal into a "hutch," and "hurled" it away to
the shaft. That was why Private Hogg referred to him as a "drawer." In
his military capacity he now removes the chalky soil from the trench
with great dexterity, and builds it up into a neat parapet behind, as
a precaution against the back-blast of a "Black Maria."

There are not enough, picks and shovels to go round--_cela va sans
dire_. However, Private Mucklewame and others, who are not of the
delving persuasion, exhibit no resentment. Digging is not their
department. If you hand them a pick and shovel and invite them to
set to work, they lay the pick upon the ground beside the trench and
proceed to shovel earth over it until they have lost it. At a later
stage in this great war-game they will fight for these picks and
shovels like wild beasts. Shrapnel is a sure solvent of professional
etiquette.

However, to-day the pickless squad are lined up a short distance away
by the relentless Captain Wagstaffe, and informed--

"You are under fire from that wood. Dig yourselves in!"

Digging oneself in is another highly unpopular fatigue. First of
all you produce your portable entrenching-tool--it looks like a
combination of a modern tack-hammer and a medieval back-scratcher--and
fit it to its haft. Then you lie flat upon your face on the wet grass,
and having scratched up