With the compass bearing I had, getting back was simple. I saw the last man into our sap, and found the O.C. waiting there for me. I'd no sooner given him my news than he was at the guns. We had twenty or thirty rifles levelled on the same mark, too, and, at "the Peacemaker's" signal, they all spoke at once. Gad! it was fine to see the fire spouting from the M.G.'s mouth, and to know how its thunder must be telling. Four belts we gave 'em altogether, and then whipped the guns down into cover, just as the Boche machine-guns began to answer from all along their line. It was a "great do," as the S.M. said. The men were wildly delighted. They had seen the target; lain and watched it, under orders not to make a sound. And now the pressure was off. Listening now, the Boche guns having ceased fire, our sentries could plainly hear groaning and moaning opposite, and see the lights reflected on the Boche parados moving to and fro as their stretcher-bearers went about their work. A "great do," indeed. And so says your "_Temporary Gentleman_." IN BILLETS You have asked me once or twice about billets, and I ought to have told you more about them before; only there seems such a lot to pick and choose from that when I do sit down to write I seldom get on to the particular story I mean to tell. And that reminds me, I didn't tell you of the odd thing that happened the night we came out into billets this time. The Boche had finished his customary evening Hymn of Hate, or we thought he had, and while the men were filing into their different billets the C.S.M. proceeded to post our Company guard outside Company Headquarters. He had just given the sentry his instructions and turned away, when Boche broke out in a fresh place--their battery commander's evening sauerkraut had disagreed with him, or something--and half a dozen shells came whistling over the village in quick succession. One landed in the roadway, a yard and a half in front of the newly-posted sentry. Had it been a sound shell, it would have "sent him West"; but it proved a dud, and merely dug itself a neat hole in the macadam and lay there like a little man, having first sent a spray of mud and a few bits of flint spurting over our sentry and rattling against his box.