Benevolent Visitor (to dame who has a son at the War.) "Can't you tell me what he is in? Is it the Infantry, or Cavalry or Artillery?"
Dame. "Well, Mum, where 'tis I don't exactly belong to bemember. But I know 'tis shootin'."
THE WATCH DOGS.
XIX.
Dear Charles,—Since I last wrote to you my time has been almost exclusively devoted to that peculiarly offensive animal the cheval de frise. Of the many unpleasant things one may meet on a dark night in these parts, this is quite the worst. It has four long wooden legs, two at each end: it measures anything from ten to thirty feet in length, and consists almost entirely of barbed wire. It is only the pleasing thought of the annoyance it will cause to any Germans who step across from over the way to call upon us that enables us to bear with it while we convey it from our local base to the trench, for some hundreds of yards along the trench, and finally over the parapet into the open beyond. During this period it displays—what no doubt it supposes to be its charm—an affectionate, clinging mood. To every telephone wire, clothes line, pole, prop, sandbag or person within reach it attaches itself tenaciously, and, if only you would keep these letters of mine to yourself, I could entertain you for an hour with the language in which Joe Bailey, Jim Perry, Harry Hughes and one Bolter address it.
The other night I was assisting the operations of these four stalwarts of mine in front of the parapet, where deadly silence is enjoined and observed lest star shells, search-lights, bullets, shrapnel, high explosives, hand grenades, rifle grenades and what-nots ensue, when feelings reached a crisis. The last straw broke the back of the camel, and a score of sentries, listening in the night for the slightest sound, were startled by "a voice without" saying in tones rather louder than those of ordinary conversation:—"'Oo are yer ketchin' at? I ain't no bloomin' Bosch." My sympathies were so much with the speaker that I could but forgive him his sin and his imprudence even while we lay with beating hearts upon the ground, waiting for the sequel.
There is a tale current here of the dismal fate of certain of the enemy who, after no less toil and suffering, had established their cheval in front of their parapet by night. Conceive their feelings at daylight on observing the faithless monster posted as a bulwark in front of our English trenches, whither they had been removed!
We have had a curious instance of the upside-down nature of things now prevailing. Four of us were dozing in the bright sun of a Sunday afternoon, just as you might be doing in your own cabbage patch. Suddenly a bullet passed over the parapet, and with no more than a matter of inches between itself and my skipper's ear. His indifference to these little varmints is usually such that we were not a little surprised to see him leap nervously to one side. Apology was offered as he settled down again. "Sorry," he said, "I thought it was a wasp."
You will like to hear the details of a recent enquiry touching the death of a certain horse in the transport lines, an event undoubtedly due to rifle fire,
