You must not imagine, however, that all this night-work is performed in gross darkness.  On the contrary.  There is abundance of illumination; and by a pretty thought, each side illuminates the other.  We perform our nocturnal tasks, in front of and behind the firing trench, amid a perfect hail of star-shells and magnesium lights, topped up at times by a searchlight—­all supplied by our obliging friend the Hun.  We, on our part, do our best to return these graceful compliments.

The curious and uncanny part of it all is that there is no firing.  During these brief hours there exists an informal truce, founded on the principle of live and let live.  It would be an easy business to wipe out that working-party, over there by the barbed wire, with a machine-gun.  It would be child’s play to shell the road behind the enemy’s trenches, crowded as it must be with ration-waggons and water-carts, into a blood-stained wilderness.  But so long as each side confines itself to purely defensive and recuperative work, there is little or no interference.  That slave of duty, Zacchaeus, keeps on pegging away; and occasionally, if a hostile patrol shows itself too boldly, there is a little exuberance from a machine-gun; but on the whole there is silence.  After all, if you prevent your enemy from drawing his rations, his remedy is simple:  he will prevent you from drawing yours.  Then both parties will have to fight on empty stomachs, and neither of them, tactically, will be a penny the better.  So, unless some elaborate scheme of attack is brewing, the early hours of the night are comparatively peaceful.  But what is that sudden disturbance in the front-line trench?  A British rifle rings out, then another, and another, until there is an agitated fusilade from end to end of the section.  Instantly the sleepless host across the way replies, and for three minutes or so a hurricane rages.  The working parties out in front lie flat on their faces, cursing patiently.  Suddenly the storm dies away, and perfect silence reigns once more.  It was a false alarm.  Some watchman, deceived by the whispers of the night breeze, or merely a prey to nerves, has discerned a phantom army approaching through the gloom, and has opened fire thereon.  This often occurs when troops are new to trench-work.

It is during these hours, too, that regiments relieve one another in the trenches.  The outgoing regiment cannot leave its post until the incoming regiment has “taken over.”  Consequently you have, for a brief space, two thousand troops packed into a trench calculated to hold one thousand.  Then it is that strong men swear themselves faint, and the Rugby football player has reason to be thankful for his previous training in the art of “getting through the scrum.”  However perfect your organisation may be, congestion is bound to occur here and there; and it is no little consolation to us to feel, as we surge and sway in the darkness, that over there in the German lines a Saxon and a Prussian private, irretrievably jammed together in a narrow communication trench, are consigning one another to perdition in just the same husky whisper as that employed by Private Mucklewame and his “opposite number” in the regiment which has come to relieve him.