tion by a further course of intense
bombardment and some fierce infantry fighting. Nevertheless, the
trenches had been put into much better shape since our earlier
occupancy of them, so that what with our work that night they were by
the morning of the seventh in fairly good shape.

The night was not unusual in any way. There was the regular amount of
shelling, of star shells, of machine gun and rifle fire, and of
course, casualties. Those we always had, be it ever so quiet.

Even the morning "Stand-to" with that mysterious dread of unknown
dangers that it invariably brought gave us nothing worse than an hour
of chilly waiting--and later, the smoke of the Germans' cooking fires.

There were none for us. It was as simple as algebra. Smoke attracted
undue artillery attention--the Germans had artillery; we had not. They
had fires; we had not.

The day rolled by smoothly enough. Except for the fresh graves and a
certain number of unburied dead the small-pox appearance of the
shell-pitted ground about might have been thought to have been of
ancient origin; so filled with water were the shell holes and so large
had they grown as a result of the constant sloughing in of their
sodden banks.

During all these days the German fire on the salient at large had
continued as fiercely as before but had spared us its severest trials.

The night of the seventh passed to all outward appearance pretty much
in the same manner as the preceding one.

CHAPTER V

THE EIGHTH OF MAY AND THE LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS

Morning in the Trenches--The Artillery Preparation for the
Infantry Attack--The P.P's Chosen to Stem the Tide--The Trust of
a Lady--Chaos--Corporal Dover--The Manner in Which Some Men Kill
and Others Die.

It seemed as though I had just stepped off my whack of sentry go for
my group when a kick in the ribs apprised me that it was "Stand-to." I
rubbed my eyes, swore and rose to my feet. Such was the narrowness of
the trench that the movement put me at my post at the parapet, where
in common with my mates, I fell to scanning the top for the first
signs of day and the Germans.

The latter lay on the other side of the ravine from us as they had
since the Fourth, except for such times as they had assaulted our
position. The smoke of Ypres and all the close-packed villages of a
thickly populated countryside rose sullenly on every hand.

Over everything there hung the pallor of the mist-ridden Flemish