So the first-fruits of the raid was Captain Ayling, of the Emma Gees.  He had stationed himself in a concrete emplacement in the front line, the better to “observe” the fire of his guns when it should be required.  Unfortunately this was the destination selected by the misguided Niggs for his first (and as it proved, last) bomb.  The raiders came safely back in due course, but by that time Ayling, liberally (but by a miracle not dangerously) ballasted with assorted scrap-iron, was on his way to the First Aid Post.

II

At the present moment we are right back at rest once more, and are being treated with a consideration, amounting almost to indulgence, which convinces us that we are being “fattened up”—­to employ the gruesome but expressive phraseology of the moment—­for some particularly strenuous enterprise in the near future.

Well, we are ready.  It is nine months since Loos, and nearly six since we scraped the nightmare mud of Ypres from our boots, gum, thigh, for the last time.  Our recent casualties have been light—­our only serious effort of late has been the recapture of the Kidney Bean—­the new drafts have settled down, and the young officers have been blooded.  And above all, victory is in the air.  We are going into our next fight with new-born confidence in the powers behind us.  Loos was an experimental affair; and though to the humble instruments with which the experiment was made the proceedings were less hilarious than we had anticipated, the results were enormously valuable to a greatly expanded and entirely untried Staff.

“We shall do better this time,” said Major Wagstaffe to Bobby Little, as they stood watching the battalion assemble, in workmanlike fashion, for a route-march.  “There are just one or two little points which had not occurred to us then.  We have grasped them now, I think.”

“Such as?”

“Well, you remember we all went into the Loos show without any very lucid idea as to how far we were to go, and where to knock off for the day, so to speak.  The result was that the advance of each Division was regulated by the extent to which the German wire in front of it had been cut by our artillery.  Ours was well and truly cut, so we penetrated two or three miles.  The people on our left never started at all.  Lord knows, they tried hard enough.  But how could any troops get through thirty feet of uncut wire, enfiladed by machine-guns?  The result was that after forty-eight hours’ fighting, our whole attacking front, instead of forming a nice straight line, had bagged out into a series of bays and peninsulas.”

“Our crowd wasn’t even a peninsula,” remarked Bobby with feeling.  “For an hour or so it was an island!”