We tramp along this sunken lane for the best part of a mile. It winds
a good deal. Every hundred yards or so comes a great promontory of
sandbags, necessitating four right-angle turns. Once we pass under the
shadow of trees, and apple-blossom flutters down upon our upturned
faces. We are walking through an orchard. Despite the efforts of ten
million armed men, brown old Mother Earth has made it plain that
seedtime and harvest shall still prevail.
Now we are crossing a stream, which cuts the trench at right angles.
The stream is spanned by a structure of planks--labelled, it is hardly
necessary to say, LONDON BRIDGE. The side-street, so to speak, by
which the stream runs away, is called JOCK'S JOY. We ask why?
"It's the place where the Highlanders wash their knees," is the
explanation.
Presently we arrive at PICCADILLY CIRCUS, a muddy excavation in the
earth, from which several passages branch. These thoroughfares are
not all labelled with strict regard for London geography. We note THE
HAYMARKET, also PICCADILLY; but ARTILLERY LANE seems out of place,
somehow. On the site, too, of the Criterion, we observe a subterranean
cavern containing three recumbent figures, snoring lustily. This bears
the sign CYCLISTS' REST.
We, however, take the turning marked SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, and
after passing (quite wrongly, don't you think?) through TRAFALGAR
SQUARE--six feet by eight--find ourselves in the actual firing trench.
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