Having arrived at our allotted area, we get to work.  The firing-trench proper is outlined on the turf a hundred yards or so down the reverse slope of a low hill.  When it is finished it will be a mere crack in the ground, with no front cover to speak of; for that would make it conspicuous.  Number One Platoon gets to work on this.  To Number Two is assigned a more subtle task—­namely, the construction of a dummy trench a comfortable distance ahead, dug out to the depth of a few inches, to delude inquisitive aeroplanes, and rendered easily visible to the enemy’s observing stations by a parapet of newly-turned earth.  Numbers Three and Four concentrate their energies upon the supporting trench and its approaches.

The firing-trench is our place of business—­our office in the city, so to speak.  The supporting trench is our suburban residence, whither the weary toiler may betake himself periodically (or, more correctly, in relays) for purposes of refreshment and repose.  The firing-trench, like most business premises, is severe in design and destitute of ornament.  But the suburban trench lends itself to more imaginative treatment.  An auctioneer’s catalogue would describe it as A commodious bijou residence, on (or of) chalky soil; three feet wide and six feet deep; in the style of the best troglodyte period.  Thirty seconds brisk crawl (or per stretcher) from the firing line.  Gas laid on—­

But only once, in a field near Aldershot, where Private Mucklewame first laid bare, and then perforated, the town main with his pick.

—­With own water supply—­ankle-deep at times—­telephone, and the usual offices.

We may note that the telephone communicates with the observing-station, lying well forward, in line with the dummy trench.  The most important of the usual offices is the hospital—­a cavern excavated at the back of the trench, and roofed over with hurdles, earth, and turf.

It is hardly necessary to add that we do not possess a real field-telephone.  But when you have spent four months in firing dummy cartridges, performing bayonet exercises without bayonets, taking hasty cover from non-existent shell fire, capturing positions held by no enemy, and enacting the part of a “casualty” without having received a scratch, telephoning without a telephone is a comparatively simple operation.  All you require is a ball of string and no sense of humour.  Second Lieutenant Waddell manages our telephone.

Meanwhile we possess our souls in patience.  We know that the factories are humming night and day on our behalf; and that if, upon a certain day in a certain month, the contractors do not deliver our equipment down to the last water-bottle cork, “K” will want to know the reason why; and we cannot imagine any contractor being so foolhardy as to provoke that terrible man into an inquiring attitude of mind.