Our colonel telephoned down to know if we knew whose mine it was, which was the question we wanted to ask him. The guns from both sides became busy under the column of smoke. Oh, yes, there were Germans in the trenches which had appeared vacant. Their shots and ours merged in the hissing medley of a tempest. “Not enough guns--not enough noise for an attack!” said experienced Tommy, who knew what an attack was like. The commander of the adjoining brigade telephoned to the division commander, who passed the word through to our colonel, who passed it to us, that the mine was German and had burst thirty yards short of the British trench. “After all that digging, wasting _Boche_ powder in that fashion! The Kaiser won’t like it!” said Mr. Atkins. “We exploded one under them yesterday and it made them hate so hard they couldn’t wait. They’ve awful tempers, the _Boches_!” And he finished the job on which he was engaged when interrupted, eating a large piece of ration bread surmounted by all the ration jam it would hold; while one of the company officers reminded me that it was about dinner time. * * * * * “What do you think I am? A blooming traffic policeman?” growled the cook to two soldiers who had found themselves in a blind alley in the maze of streets back of the firing-trench. “My word! Is His Majesty’s army becoming illiterate? _Strafe_ that sign at the corner! What do you think we put it up for? To show what a beautiful hand we had at printing?” The sign on a board fastened against the earth wall read, “No thoroughfare!” The soldier cook, with a fork in his hand, his sleeves rolled up, his shirt open at his tanned throat, looked formidable. He was preoccupied; he was at close quarters roasting a chicken over a small stove. Yes, they have cook stoves in the trenches. Why not? The line had been in the same position for six months. “Little by little we improve our happy home,” said the cook. The latest acquisition was a lace curtain for the officers’ mess hall, bought at a store in the nearest town. When the cook was inside his kitchen there was no room to spill anything on the floor. The kitchen was about three feet square, with boarded walls and roof, which was covered with tar paper and a layer of earth set level with the trench parapet. The chicken roasted and the frying potatoes sizzled as an occasional bullet passed overhead, even as flies buzz about the screen door when Mary is baking biscuits for supper.