This is the recipe for _Ragoût à la mode de guerre_: Shoot a partridge over the parapet on a bright day; take your life in your hands to go out and get the victim; clean it--but not too clean; mix with it a little mutton and carrots; stew it in a canteen or dixie over a charcoal brazier, with plenty of the penetrating charcoal fumes entering your lungs; and perform all these rites in a dugout with enemy shells popping about in the neighborhood. If you have carefully carried out all these directions, then, being sufficiently hungry, add a goodly portion of that most savory of sauces--appetite--to the dish. I promise you that, though your tastes are _blasé_ to the last degree, you will admit that _Ragoût à la mode de guerre_ makes a meal fit for the discriminating palate of a king. CHAPTER XIX LEAVE Leave is the be-all and end-all of anyone who has been at the front for any great time. It is supposed to come every three months. It never does, but you know that if you stay long enough it will come, for Army Headquarters, Corps H.Q., Divisional H.Q. and finally Brigade H.Q. (I don't dare mention Battalion H.Q.!) "may use all of the leave some of the time, and some of the leave all of the time, but they cannot go on using all of the leave all of the time," to paraphrase Mr. P. T. Barnum in regard to fooling the people. So all you must do is to possess your soul in patience, avoid getting directly in front of a shell or bullet, and some day in the dim and distant future leave will come for you to expose yourself once again to the temptations of the World, the Flesh and the Devil in London; that is, if any of them remain when the Bishop of London, the Food Controller, the Anti-Treating Laws, and the Provost Marshal have done their work. One day a fellow officer (in this connection I nearly said sufferer) informs you that his batman was told by the O.C.'s batman that he had heard that the Brigadier General was taking leave the end of the month. After that you go on hearing by devious routes that the Brigade Majors, Captains, and Lieutenants are going soon, and suddenly you realize that shortly your own Battalion Headquarters will find leave filtering through on them. And perchance, toward the end of the list, you know you come somewhere. It is then you look up your bank account, if you happen to have any, and you take no extra chances either with shells or superstitions, for soldiers are almost as superstitious as sailors.