it—­nothing happened.  The day passed and then another day.  At times I longed to be taken out and shot, and once or twice I felt I didn’t care about anything.  I didn’t care whether I died or not.  A week passed and then another week.  I don’t know how I lived through it.  Then, one day, I was told to pack up and rejoin my unit.  I don’t know exactly what I did, but I think I must have gone hysterical.  I remember some N.C.O. saying I ought to stay a bit because I wasn’t well enough to go up the line.  He said he’d speak to the officer and get me a few days’ rest.  But the thought of staying in that place made me shiver.  I said I was absolutely all right and went back to my unit.

“But I never found out what had happened—­you see, I was only a common soldier, so they didn’t trouble to tell me—­until I got a letter from the Captain who was in charge of me when I was on that forty-three hour job.  He said he’d heard I was in for a court martial for sleeping when on guard, so he wrote to our headquarters to tell them I’d worked forty-three hours on end and wasn’t fit to do a guard after a spell like that.  Then they must have made a lot of inquiries—­I expect there’s a whole file of papers about me at headquarters.  Anyhow, that’s how I got off—­it’s more than a month ago now.  Well, yesterday morning I was put on guard again.  I tried to get out of it, but the officer said I was swinging the lead and he wouldn’t listen to any excuses.  I told him I’d had insomnia overnight and could hardly keep my eyes open.  I said I’d do anything rather than a guard—­a fatigue job or a patrol, no matter how dangerous, as long as it kept me on the move.  The very thought of doing a guard made me tremble all over.  He swore at me and said he’d heard these tales before and told me to shut up and get on with it.  Well, I had to stand in the trench in front of a steel plate with holes in it through which I had to peer.  It was just about daybreak.  There was a tree growing about fifty yards off.  It had been knocked about pretty badly, but there were plenty of leaves left on it.  I stared at it, trying hard to keep awake.  But soon the trunk began to quiver, then it wobbled with a wavy motion like a snake.  Then the leafy part seemed to shoot out in all directions until there was nothing but a green blur, and I fell back against the trench wall and my rifle clattered down.  I pulled myself together, absolutely mad with fear, because I kept on thinking of the last time I went on guard and the court martial and the death sentence.  I ground my teeth and stared at the tree again.  But the trunk began to wobble with snaky undulations and the green blur grew bigger and bigger in sudden jerks, while I tried frantically and desperately to keep it small.  But it got the better of me and all at once it obscured everything with a rush and I dropped forward and knocked my forehead against the steel plate.  I pulled myself together and prayed for a Blighty or something that would get