Don't go too fast or you may miss them; but should you see a head peer from behind a kitchen-range express no surprise. Just--"Toppin' evening, ain't it? Getting furniture for the dug-out--what?" To linger is bad form, but it is quite permissible to ask his companion--seated in a torn-up drain--if the ratting is good. Then pass on in a leisurely manner, _but_--when you're round the corner, run like a hare. With these cursed Germans, you never know. * * * * * Night--and a working-party stretching away over a ploughed field are digging a communication trench. The great green flares lob up half a mile away, a watery moon shines on the bleak scene. Suddenly a noise like the tired sigh of some great giant, a scorching sheet of flame that leaps at you out of the darkness, searing your very brain, so close does it seem; the ping of death past your head; the clatter of shovel and pick next you as a muttered curse proclaims a man is hit; a voice from down the line: "Gawd! Old Ginger's took it. 'Old up, mate. Say, blokes, Ginger's done in!" Aye--it's worse at night. Shrapnel! Woolly, fleecy puffs of smoke floating gently down wind, getting more and more attenuated, gradually disappearing, while below each puff an oval of ground has been plastered with bullets. And it's when the ground inside the oval is full of men that the damage is done. Not you perhaps--but someone. Next time--maybe you. * * * * * And that, methinks, is an epitome of other things besides shrapnel. It's _all_ the war to the men who fight and the women who wait. PART ONE PART ONE CHAPTER I THE MOTOR-GUN