ane,
and they fancy they are being gassed, and in desperation tear them off.
It is the duty of an officer to decide when the danger has passed and
test the air. I remember on one occasion I warned some men who were
opening their coats that the danger had not passed, but when I returned
I found they had removed their masks and three of them were very
severely gassed. We are always on the lookout for gas, and when the
wind is dangerous a "gas-alert" signal is given, when every man wears
his mask in a ready position so that it can be donned without a
second's delay.

I was really sorry to leave those trenches. So many months was I there
that they were something like a home to me, and who knew what was
awaiting one in another and an unknown section? I knew every
shell-hole in No Man's Land, and constant observation of the enemy
methods enabled me to anticipate his moves. I felt that nowhere else
would I be so successful. I even parted with a rat that I had tamed in
my dugout with a feeling of regret, though on all his kin I waged a
bitter war, spending many hours when I ought to have been sleeping in
shooting them with my automatic as they came into the light of the
dugout doorway. It was there, too, that I experimented with the enemy
grenades, and I remember once nearly scaring an Australian nigger
white. He was the only colored man in our brigade, and was just
passing in front of the dugout as I threw a detonator on to the hard
metal of an old road a few yards away. Evidently he was surprised at
being bombed when he thought he was among friends! He, however,
received nothing worse than the fright.

CHAPTER XXI

THE VILLAGE OF SLEEP

There was little element of surprise about the "Somme" offensive.
Although there must have been some uncertainty in the mind of the
German Staff as to just where the blow would be struck, for our papers
were filled with rumors of a drive in the north, and troops and big
guns were moved north every day and withdrawn at night, yet the
intensity of the artillery bombardment around Albert, which day by day
waxed ever greater, proclaimed in a shout that here was the point on
which our punch would strike.

The selection of this place for an offensive was an indication that it
was not the policy of the Allies to attempt to drive the German army
out of France, but that their evident intention was to defeat the enemy
practically in the present trenches. The German line in France