THE YPRES TIMES
75
a hole in the foliage overhead. It gave promise of a gorgeous day. There was
not a sound to suggest that war, ugly and shameless, lay but little over a mile
away. Peacebreathless with surprise, it seemedlay over the surrounding
landscape.
Presently a crunching of dead twigs told of somebody approaching. A Scottish
officer, judging by his diced Glengarry, appeared through a break in the undergrowth.
He wore a long mackintosh, and carried a stout pole. His boots and puttees were
covered with moist mud. Closely following him came a khaki clad figure also in a
Glengarry, and wearing an apron over his kilt; then another, and another, until
in the sun-bathed glade some seventy men strode wearily one behind the other in
Indian file. Only the sharp cracking of dead twigs told of their presence. Rifles
slung over shoulder, or carried partridge fashion. Heavily filled packs that they
continually hitched well up on their backs by a convulsive throw of the shoulders.
These men looked as though a night's sleep belonged to the dim and distant past.
Not a word passed from one to the other. Slowly they wound their way to a line
of dug-outs in the middle of the wood. Without halting, the officer quietly told
them to dismiss. Searching out the better dug-outs, the tired company threw oft
their equipment and crawled in after it. A few muttered remarks, then silence
again. Away at the other end of the wood a nightingale suddenly filled the air with
a flood of golden melody. The very trees seemed to stand still in awed delight
at the purity and volume of those liquid notes. Shortly the climbing sun would call
forth the activities of the day. The nightingale would be silent; and the sniping in
those near-by trenches would begin afresh.
It was midday. Patches of ground before that line of dug-outs were bathed
in brilliant, actinic sunshine. Blue-bottles buzzed lazily in search of garbage.
Somewhere overhead an aeroplane droned its warning accompaniment, gradually
becoming lost in space.
The flap covering the opening to one of the dug-outs moved, then was thrown
back, as a man, clad only in a grey shirt and boots, crawled into view. Turning, he
drew out his kilt and apron. He stood up, stretched himself, then drank in deep
breaths of the fragrant air. Afterwards, tying his apron over his shirt, he walked
over to the stump of a tree which happened to stand in a bright patch of sunshine,
and spreading his kilt so that the inside faced upwards, he returned to his dug-out.
Emerging almost immediately with his mess tin and a water bottle, he placed them
on the ground while he industriously gathered sticks and dried leaves, very soon
having quite a heap. Then, picking up an old biscuit tin, he returned to his dug-out
for a bayonet. Quickly he made sufficient holes in the tin to provide a very useful
brazier. It was not long before he had a crackling fire going, the lower portion
of his mess tin, full of water, precariously balanced across one corner of the brazier.
Squatting on his heels he held the lid belonging to it over the flames, occasionally
adding another handful of twigs to the failing fire. Very soon the glade was filled
with the appetizing smell of sizzling bacon, and, first one, then another dug-out
burst into life. Here was a perfectly lovely picnic. A dozen fires were soon in being,
each having a little queue of waiting warriors, each looking after his own, and his
pal's breakfast. Tea and bacon, of course. Sometimes porridge or toast. What
a perfect morning! What a perfect war! Just the muttering of some heavy
bombardment away down south, and an occasional boom of gun or shell on the
left, towards Ypres; a few sniper's shots now and again in front; but. for to-day,
sunshinehot baconcontentment.
Breakfast over, a number of the hardier or more punctilious of this little band
were to be seen with shirt sleeves rolled up, faces covered in soap, and sharing
each other's shaving waterpiping hot from the now dying fires. Without any
