When, after much forethought, he has found something to do and has begun doing it, there is a cry of “Stand clear!” and, with that prudence which even an Englishman will learn if you do not hustle him but give him a year or two to find by experience that care should sometimes be taken, all get to earth.  The guns fire; the neighbourhood heaves and readjusts itself, and a man may then come out again.  By the time, however, he has collected his senses and his materials there is another “Stand clear!” and back he must go to earth.  This is what is technically known as Rest.

It was not good enough for one of the battalion cooks.  No man can do justice to a mess of pottage by lying on his belly at a distance and frowning at it.  After many movements to and fro, he eventually said be damned to guns and “Stand clears;” stood on the top of his cooker (there was nowhere else to stand), and, holding a dixie lid in his hand and bestowing on the contents of the dixie that encouraging smile without which no stew can stew, defied all the artillery of the B.E.F. to do its worst.  It did.

The cook recovered to find himself among his dixies, frizzling pleasantly and browning nicely in certain parts.  Even so, professional interests over-came any feeling of personal injury.  Rising majestically, he stepped down and advanced upon the nearest gun crew.  “Now you’ve done it, you blighters!” he shouted, waving an angry fist at them.  “You’ve been and gone and blown all the pork out of the beans.”

The same man went on holiday to the neighbouring town, which is in reality an ordinarily dull and dirty provincial place, but to the tired warrior is a haven of rest and a paradise of gaiety and good things.  Here he came into contact with the local A.P.M. in the following way.  The latter was in his office after lunch, brooding no doubt, when in came a French policeman greatly excited in French.  There was, it appeared, promise of a commotion at the Hotel de Ville.  A British soldier had got mixed up in the queue of honest French civilians who were waiting outside for the delivery of their legal papers.  There were no bi-linguists present, but it had been made quite clear to the Britisher that he must go, and it had been made quite clear by the Britisher that he should stay.  Always outside the Hotel de Ville at 2.30 of an afternoon was this queue of natives, each waiting his turn to be admitted to the joyless sanctum of the Commissaire, there to receive those illegible documents without which no French home is complete.  Never before had a British soldier fallen in with them, and, when requested to dismiss, showed signs of being obstreperous.