Produced by Geetu Melwani, Riikka Talonpoika and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Kitchener's Mob The Adventures of an American in the British Army By James Norman Hall Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1916 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES NORMAN HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published May 1916_ TO TOMMY OF THE GREAT WAR WHO IS ADDING IMMORTAL LUSTER TO THE NAME OF ATKINS Note This brief narrative is by no means a complete record of life in a battalion of one of Lord Kitchener's first armies. It is, rather, a story in outline, a mere suggestion of that life as it is lived in the British lines along the western front. If those who read gain thereby a more intimate view of trench warfare, and of the men who are so gallantly and cheerfully laying down their lives for England, the purpose of the writer will have been accomplished. The diagram which appears on the front and rear covers of the book is a partially conventionalized design illustrating some features of trench construction mentioned in Chapter VI. For obvious reasons it is not drawn to scale, and although it is a truthful representation of a typical segment of the British line, it is not an exact sketch of any existing sector. _April_, 1916. Contents I. Joining Up 1 II. Rookies 9 III. The Mob in Training 17 IV. Ordered Abroad 39 V. The Parapet-etic School 55 VI. Private Holloway, Professor of Hygiene 69 VII. Midsummer Calm 92 VIII. Under Cover 108 IX. Billets 129 X. New Lodgings 144 XI. "Sitting Tight" 177 Kitchener's Mob CHAPTER I JOINING UP