“Black swine dogs, one of them nearly had me as I was bringing the mail-bags,” snorted a weedy youth scarcely out of his teens, looking over the top of his coffee pot.  “I always said that was a dangerous gap where the communication trench crosses the ditch.”

“You babies should keep your stupid heads down like your elders,” retorted a grizzled reservist as he stuffed tobacco into the green china bowl of a real German pipe.

The talk gradually went along the front line for about the distance of one company’s front on either side, that there had been a relief in the British trenches, and that there were Australians over there.  One man had heard the sergeant saying so in the next bay of the trench; it meant exactly as much to them as it would to Australian troops to hear the corps opposite them was Bavarian or Saxon or Hanoverian.  They knew the English and the French possessed some of these colonial corps.  They had been opposite the Algerians in the Champagne before they came to this part of the line.

“They are ugly swine to meet in the dark,” they thought.  “These white and black colonial regiments.”

Fritz lives very much in his dug-out—­is very good at keeping his head below the parapet—­and he thought very little more about it.  His head was much fuller of the arrival of the weekly parcel of butter and cake from his hardworking wife at home, and of the coming days when his battalion would go out of the trenches into billets in the villages, when he might get a pass to go to a picture theatre in Lille—­he had kept the old pass because a slight tear of the corner or a snick opposite the date would make it good for use on half a dozen occasions yet.  He did not bother his head about what British division was holding the trenches opposite to him.

But that divisional Intelligence Officer did—­he worried very much.  He wanted to get a certain query removed from an index as soon as possible.

It is always best to get information for nothing.  A good way to do this is to make the enemy talk; and you may be able to make him talk back if you send over a particular sort of talk to him.  So a message was thrown over into our lines, “Take care”; and “You offal dogs must bleed for France.”

This effort did not fetch any incriminating reply; and so, on a later night, a lantern was flashed over the parapet, “Australian, go home,” it winked.  “Go in the morning—­you will be dead in the evening; we are good.”

Later again appeared a notice-board, “Advance Australia fair—­if you can.”

Indeed, Fritz became quite talkative, and put up a notice-board, “English defeat at sea—­seven cruisers sunk, one damaged, eleven other craft sunk.  Hip!  Hip!  Hurrah!”

This did draw at last some of the men in the front line, and they slipped over the parapet a placard giving a British account of the losses in the North Sea fight.  The putting up of notices is an irregular proceeding, and this placard had to be withdrawn at once, even before the Germans could properly read it.  The result was an immediate message posted on the German trenches, “Once more would you let us see the message?” Still there was no sign from our trenches.  So another plaintive request appeared on the German parapet, “We beg of you to show again the table of the fleet.”