The canteen was crowded.  All the benches were occupied and men who were unable to find seats stood around in groups.  There was noisy conversation and singing and shouting.  Nearly everyone was drinking beer.  Those who sat at the tables were playing cards.  The air was thick with tobacco-smoke.  Two or three candles were burning on every table.  And all at once, without any warning, the thunder was loosened upon us.  There was an ear-splitting roar and in a moment candles were swept away, benches and tables overturned, and the whole crowd of men was down on the floor, trembling and panic-stricken.  Another detonation, and then another, shaking the ground and reverberating, and sending up showers of stones and loose earth that came rattling down on to the canteen-roof, while the huddled, sprawling mass of human bodies shook and squirmed with terror.  The droning of propellers could be plainly heard, then it grew weaker and weaker, until it passed away.  One by one the men got up.  Someone lit a candle.  Tables, benches, and prostrate bodies had been thrown into confusion.  Cards and coins and overturned beer-mugs littered the floor.  The smell of spilt beer mingled with the smell of stale tobacco.  A few of us stepped out into the open air.  We inhaled a pungent, sulphurous stench.  We were sure our camp had been bombed this time and were fearful lest any of our friends had been hit.  We walked past the Church tent—­it was full of rents and holes.  And just beyond it was a huge pit with fresh soil heaped up in a ring around it.  Loose earth and stones and sods were scattered everywhere.  Then we saw something move in the darkness—­it was a man on all fours, dragging himself painfully along and uttering a groan with every breath.  Two bearers arrived with a stretcher.  They put it down by his side and helped him on to it.  Then they picked it up and disappeared in the gloom.  We had hardly walked a few yards further when we saw a light approaching us.  We went towards it.  A man was staggering slowly along and leaning on the shoulder of a comrade who was carrying a lantern.  He supported his right elbow with his left hand, down the back of which two thin streams of blood were winding.  His left sleeve was darkly stained and the blood was dripping from it.  His face was very pale and the corners of his mouth were slightly turned down.

Suddenly the broad white beam of a searchlight swung across the darkness.  For a time it seemed to paw the sky in a hesitating fashion and then it remained fixed on one spot.

“There ’e is!  There ’e is!” someone shouted in an excited voice.

In the white track was a brilliant silver object travelling along at a great speed.  A number of anti-aircraft guns opened fire simultaneously, and all around the shining fugitive innumerable stars of pale, liquid gold flashed out and melted away again.

“I bet they’re puttin’ ‘is bloody wind up!  Rotten bastard, bombin’ a lot o’ wounded!  If I get ’old of a Fritz up the line, I’ll murder ’im.  Yer won’t catch me takin’ no more pris’ners, I tell yer.”