“Your hat, sir!”

Another moved a sandbag slightly, but not until after the hat had come down and the head under it, most expeditiously.  Up to eight hundred yards a bullet cracks; beyond that range it whistles, sighs, even wheezes.  An elevation gives snipers, who are always trained shots, an angle of advantage.  In winter they had to rely for cover on buildings, which often came tumbling down with them when hit by a shell.  The foliage of summer is a boon to their craft.

“Does it look to you like an opening in the branches of that tree—­the big one at the right?”

In the mass of leaves a dark spot was visible.  It might be natural, or it might be a space cut away for the swing of a rifle-barrel.  Perhaps sitting up there snugly behind a bullet-proof shield fastened to the limbs was a German sharpshooter, watching for a shot with the patience of a hound for a rabbit to come out of its hole.

“It’s about time we gave that tree a spray good for that kind of fungus, from a machine-gun!”

A bullet coming from our side swept overhead.  One of our own sharpshooters had seen something to shoot at.

“Not giving you much excitement!” said Tommy.

“I suppose I’d get a little if I stood up on the parapet?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t get a ticket for England; you’d get a box!”

“There’s a cemetery just behind the lines if you’d prefer to stay in France!”

I had passed that cemetery with its fresh wooden crosses on my way to the trench.  These tenderhearted soldiers who joked with death had placed flowers on the graves of fallen comrades and bought elaborate French funeral wreaths with their meagre pay—­which is another side of Mr. Thomas Atkins.  There is sentiment in him.  Yes, he’s loaded with sentiment, but not for the “movies.”

“Keep your head down there, Eames!” called a corporal.  “I don’t want to be taking an inventory of your kit.”

Eames did not even realize that his head was above the parapet.  The hardest thing to teach a soldier is not to expose himself.  Officers keep iterating warnings and then forget to practise what they preach.  That morning a soldier had been shot through the heart and arm sideways behind the trench.  He had lain down unnoticed for a nap in the sun, it was supposed.  When he awoke, presumably he sat up and yawned and Herr Schmidt, from some platform in a tree, had a bloody reward for his patience.

The next morning I saw the British take their revenge.  Some German who thought that he could not be seen in the mist of dawn was walking along the German parapet.  What hopes!  Four or five men took careful aim and fired.  That dim figure collapsed in a way that was convincing.

As I swept the line of German trenches with the glasses I saw a wisp of flag clinging to its pole in the still air far down to the left.  Flags are as unusual above trenches as men standing up in full view of the enemy.  Then a breeze caught the folds, and I saw that it was the tricolour of France.