For an hour I stood sentry, then was relieved. Five of my companions and myself huddled into a partially completed dugout in a vain effort to keep warm. While getting up to the trenches the weight of the equipment kept us warm, also the heavy traveling, but standing still in that trench was a different matter. The mud rose to my thighs in places. Inside the dugout was a small charcoal fire, but very little heat came from that. The night was bitterly raw and cold, and wet and muddy as we were, we could not keep from shivering, while I lost all feeling in my feet. Then we found we could get a certain amount of heat in the dugout, as the floor was dry, by hugging each other tightly. While it would be hard to conceive of a bunch of boys feeling more miserable than we did, yet I have to smile to myself when I think of those moments. With our arms clasping each other tightly, leaning over a little charcoal fire, our teeth chattering like monkeys, almost keeping time to the rattle of the machine guns, we managed to keep our heads. It is wonderful what men will endure when sweet life is the price. --------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: OUR NEST (DUGOUT) IS ON THE RIGHT. MEALS ARE ANY TIME WHEN ONE IS HUNGRY.] --------------------------------------------------------------------- It was while trying to keep warm that first night over the little charcoal fire that I first learned how to handle my bayonet, if I was ever to be lucky enough to ram it so far into a German belly that I couldn't pull it out handily. The lesson came from a corporal of the East Lanks (Lancashires) who was explaining the advantages of the Lee-Enfield rifle and bayonet over the Ross, and his description was so realistically vivid that my teeth forgot to chatter with the chill I had. "You see," he said, "if you push it in too far, you canna get it oot again, because this groove on the side o' it makes the 'ole air-tight; as soon as it is jabbed into a man the suction pulls the flesh all over it and you canna chuck it oot." "Well, what would you do if you couldn't get it out and another mug was making for you?" I asked. "Why if a twist won't do it, stick your foot on the beggar and wrench it out; if that won't do it, just pull the trigger a couple of times and there you are--she will blow out." "Did you ever have any trouble yourselves?"