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.
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