There seemed no particular purpose in spending the night prone in the wheat with your ears cocked like a pointer dog’s. Besides, he had other duties, exacting duties laid down by the colonel as the result of trench experience in his responsibility for the command of a company of men. It happened, as we crawled back into the trench, that a fury of shots broke out from a point along the line two or three hundred yards away; sharp, vicious shots on the still night air, stabbing, merciless death in their sound. Oh, yes, there was war in France; unrelenting, shrewd, tireless war. A touch of suspicion anywhere and the hornets swarmed. * * * * * It was two A. M. From the dugouts came unmistakable sounds of slumber. Men off duty were not kept awake by cold and moisture in summer. They had fashioned for themselves comfortable dormitories in the hard earth walls. A cot in an officer’s bed chamber was indicated as mine. The walls had been hung with cuts from illustrated papers and bagging spread on the floor to make it “home-like.” He lay down on the floor because he was nearer the door in case he had to respond to an alarm; besides, he said I would soon appreciate that I was not the object of any favouritism. So I did. It was a trench-made cot, fashioned by some private of engineers, I fancy, who had Germans rather than the American cousin in mind. “The wall side of the rib that runs down the middle is the comfortable side, I have found,” said my host. “It may not appear so at first, but you will find that it works out that way.” Nevertheless, one slept, his last recollection that of sniping shots, to be awakened with the first streaks of day by the sound of a fusillade--the “morning hate” or the “morning strafe,” as it was called. After the vigil of darkness it breaks the monotony to salute the dawn with a burst of rifle-shots. Eyes strained through the mist over the wheat-field watching for some one of the enemy who may be exposing himself, unconscious that it is light enough for him to be visible. Objects which are not men but look as if they might be in the hazy distance, called for attention on the chance. For ten minutes, perhaps, the serenade lasted, and then things settled down to the normal. The men were yawning and stirring from their dugouts. After the muster they would take the places of those who had been “on the bridge” through the night. “It’s a case of how little water you can wash with, isn’t it?” I said to the cook, who appreciated my thoughtfulness when I made shift with a dipperful, as I had done on desert journeys. We were in a trench that was inundated with water in winter, and not more than two miles from a town which had a water system. But bringing a water supply in pails along narrow trenches is a poor pastime, though better than bringing it up under the rifle-sights of snipers across the fields back of the trenches.