gs back boots, belt and jacket. This time he
breathes. He walks softly, but he walks. He places the boots down
firmly. He begins to make little noises. He purrs and coughs and
scratches his chin, and very gradually the air of the dug-out begins
to vibrate with life. It is like _Peer Gynt_--the "Morning" thing on
the gramophone, you know; he clinks a toothbrush against a mug, he
pours out water. It is all gradual, _crescendo_; and meanwhile I am
awakening. At 7 A.M., not being a perfect artist, he generally has to
drop something; but by that time I am only pretending to be asleep,
and I growl at him, ask him why he didn't call me an hour ago,
and then fall asleep again. I get up at eight o'clock and dress in
silence. If my batman speaks to me I cut myself, throw the razor at
him, and completely break down. In short, as I say, I am the normal
man.

With David it is otherwise. David is a big strong man. He blew into my
dug-out late one night and occupied the other bed--an affair of rude
beams and hard wire-netting. He spread himself there in sleep, and
silence fell. At dawn next morning an awful sound hurled me out of
dreams towards my revolver. I clutched it in sweating terror, and
stared round the dug-out with my heart going like a machine-gun. It
was not, however, a Hun counter-attack. It was David calling for his
servant. As the first ray of the sun lights the Eastern sky David
calls for his servant. His servant is a North-countryman. Sleeping far
off in some noxious haunt, he hears David's voice and instantly begins
to speak. His voice comes swelling towards us, talking of boots and
tunics. As he reaches the dug-out door he becomes deafening. He and
David have a shouting match. He kicks over a petrol-tin full of water,
smashes my shaving mirror, and sits on my feet while picking up the
bits.

Meanwhile David is standing on his bed and jodelling, while his batman
shrieks to him that his wife said in her last letter to him that if
he doesn't get a leaf soon the home'll be bruk up. Then David starts
slapping soap on to his face like a bill-sticker with a paste-brush.
His servant drops a field boot on to my stomach, trips over an empty
biscuit-tin and is heard grooming a boot without.

David now strops his razor. It is one of those self-binding safety
razors which is all covered with cog-wheels and steam-gauges and
levers and valves. You feed the strop into it like paper into
a printing-press, and it eats up the leath