We had to crouch low because the trench was so shallow. It was
difficult not to disturb them; the long skirts of our trench-coats
brushed against their faces.
All of a sudden we halted, making ourselves as small as could be. In
the rapidly thinning mist ahead of us, men were moving. They were
stretcher-bearers. The odd thing was that they were carrying their
wounded away from, instead of towards us. Then it flashed on us that
they were Huns. We had wandered into No Man's Land. Almost at that
moment we must have been spotted, for shells commenced falling at the
end of the trench by which we had entered. Spreading out, so as not
to attract attention, we commenced to crawl towards the other
end. Instantly that also was closed to us and a curtain of shells
started dropping behind us. We were trapped. With perfect coolness--a
coolness which, whatever I looked, I did not share--we went down on
our hands and knees, wriggling our way through the corpses and
shell-holes in the direction of where our front-line ought to
be. After what seemed an age, we got back. Later we registered the
guns, and one of our officers who had been laying in wire, was killed
in the process. His death, like everything else, was regarded without
emotion as being quite ordinary.
On the way out, when we had come to a part of our journey where the
tension was relaxed and we could be less cautious, I saw a signalling
officer lying asleep under a blackened tree.
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