One can smell tea brewing in the sheltered bay where a brazier glows cosily in the lee of the traverse. A game of cards is in progress in a dug-out, and a youth may be seen writing a letter by the light of a timid candle stuck on the wall. At that moment one does not feel far removed from home. But what a contrast in the cheerless winter. All the cosy comfort is a thing of the past. Men plough through muck and mire, dragging their feet and legs through water and mud, or sleep in the open, shivering with cold. The fingers are chilled to the bone, all feeling has gone away from the feet; for all one knows, the feet may have gone. No fires are lit, there is no wood, nothing that will burn. The long night marches have lost all their romance. Clothes are seldom dry, they cling to the body like the rags of a drowned man, scourging and scaling the flesh. The cold rain stings the flesh, the snow freezes the fingers. Marching is difficult, the roads are thick with mud, and all roads lead to the firing line, the line of red agony, of desolation. The soldier is a mute, impotent figure, a blind pawn in the game of war. The billets are cold and cheerless. The broken roof, which allowed the winds of night to play round the sleepers in the hot summer weather, now lets in the cold and wet. Sleep is hardly a rest, it is a moment of forgetfulness similar to the solace which a sick man finds in a drug. Spring was well on its way now; the boys in the trenches were happy again. Bubb and Flanagan were up to any sort of mischief or deed of daring. The persistent sniper who kept potting at their bay annoyed them however. Bubb, back from hospital and full of vitality, vowed that it was up to him to put the sniper out of action. "I'm goin' up on this 'ere caboosh at the rear," said Bubb pointing to the slag-heap behind the British front line. "I'll maybe get a sight on the Boche." "I'm with you in the game," said Flanagan. Both men went out in the early dawn and took their places close to the crest of the mammoth slag-heap. Noon found them still there lying prone on the surface of the coal-mines' off-scour, their heads close to the rim of the heap, their eyes fixed on the enemy's trench which wound slyly as a snake through the levels some seven hundred yards away. A spit down from the two boys lay the English line. Out in front of it dozens of bundles in khaki lay limp and lifeless, waiting for the summer to cover them up with her flowers. "There's a 'undred or more, out there," said Bubb. "Gawd, it's a funny bisness, killin' and killin'. One would think we enjoys it by the fuss the pypers in England makes o' it. Anyway, it's a blurry rotten way of fightin'," he continued as he changed his position by the fraction of an inch without removing his eye from the tip of the rifle foresight. "Gawd," he whispered, "I 'ave 'im now. I saw somefin' move just like a bird. I'll give 'im a round."