into so-and-so's dug-out and find it empty. You ask a sergeant where the
occupant is.

"He's down the trench, sir." You push your way down the trench, dodging
pools of water and stepping over fire buckets, mess tins, brushing past
men standing, leaning or sitting--right on down the trench, where, round
a corner, you find the platoon commander. "Well, if we can't get any
sandbags," he is probably saying to a sergeant, "we will just have to
bank it up with earth, and put those men on the other side of the
traverse," or something like that. He turns to me and says, "Come along
back to my dug-out and have a bit of cake. Someone or other has sent one
out from home."

We start back along the trench. Suddenly a low murmuring, rattling sound
can be heard in the distance. We stop to listen, the sound gets louder;
everyone stops to listen--the sound approaches, and is now
distinguishable as rifle-fire. The firing becomes faster and faster;
then suddenly swells into a roar and now comes the phenomenon of trench
warfare: "wind up"--the prairie fire of the trenches.

Everyone stands to the parapet, and away on the left a tornado of
crackling sound can be heard, getting louder and louder. In a few
seconds it has swept on down the line, and now a deafening rattle of
rifle-fire is going on immediately in front. Bullets are flicking the
tops of the sandbags on the parapet in hundreds, whilst white streaks
are shooting up with a swish into the sky and burst into bright
radiating blobs of light--the star shell at its best.

A curious thing, this "wind up." We never knew when it would come on. It
is caused entirely by nerves. Perhaps an inquisitive Boche, somewhere a