[Illustration: The arrows indicate the direction in which the fire-trenches point.] The line here forms a big salient, so that we often used to get spent bullets dropping into the redoubt, from right behind, it seemed. Here, another drawing will show what I mean: [Illustration] The dotted line is the German front trench. If the enemy A fires at the English B, the bullet will go on and fall at about C, who is facing in the direction of the arrow, in the support line. So C has to look out for _enfilading spent bullets_. For three days and nights I was in command of this redoubt, isolated, and ready with stores, ammunition, water, barbed wire and pickets, bombs, and tools, to hold out a little siege for several days if necessary. I used to leave it to get meals at Company H.Q. in the support line; otherwise, I had always to be there, ready for instant action. No one used to get more than two or three hours’ _consecutive_ sleep, and I could never take off boots, equipment, or revolver. Here is a typical scene in the redoubt. _Scene._ A dug-out, 6´ × 4´ × 4´: smell, earthy. _Time._ 2.30 a.m. I awake and listen. Deathly stillness. _A voice._ ‘What’s the time, kid?’ _Another voice._ ‘Dunno. About 2 o’clock, I reckon.’ ‘Past that.’ Long silence. ‘Rum job, this, ain’t it, kid?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, I reckon if the ---- Huns were coming over, we’d know it long afore they got ’ere. I reckon we’d ’ear the boys in front firing.’ Long pause. ‘I dunno. ’Spose there’s some sense in it, else we wouldn’t be ’ere.’ Silence. ‘---- cold on this ---- fire step. Guess it’s time they relieved us.’ Long silence. ‘Don’t them flares look funny in the mist?’ ‘Yus, I guess old Fritz uses some of them every night. Hullo, there they go again. ’Ear that machine-gun?’ Long pause, during which machine-guns pop, and snipers snipe merrily, and flares light up the sky. Trench-mortars begin behind us ‘whizz-sh-sh-sh-h-h’--silence--‘THUD.’ Then the Germans reply, sending two or three over which thud harmlessly behind. The invisible sentries have now become clearly visible to me as I look out of my dug-out. Two of them are about ten yards apart standing on the fire-platform. Theirs is the above dialogue. With a sudden _thud_, a trench-mortar shell drops fifteen yards behind us. ‘Hullo, Fritz is getting the wind up.’ ‘Getting the wind up’ is slang for getting nervous: this stolid comment from a sentry is typical of the attitude adopted towards ‘Fritz’ (the German) when he starts shelling or finding. He is supposed to be a bit jumpy! It seems hard to realise that Fritz is really trying to kill these sentries: the whole thing seems a weird, strange play.