I stayed with the sentry guarding the bodies until a stretcher party arrived and carried them away. Then I went back to the dugout and visited the men who were crowded into its most extraordinary labyrinth of passages and recesses. In the very centre of the place, which must have been deep underground, there was a kitchen, and the cooks were preparing a hot meal for the men to eat before "stand to" at dawn. The men of course were excessively crowded and many were heating their own food in mess-tins over smoking wicks steeped in melted candle grease. All were bright and cheerful as ever, in spite of the stifling atmosphere, which must have been breathed by human lungs over and over again. It was quite late when I stretched myself on my wire mattress with my steel helmet for a pillow. Only a piece of canvas separated me from the room where a lot of men were supposed to be sleeping. They were not only not asleep but kept me awake by the roars of laughter which greeted the stories they were telling. However, I managed to doze off in time, and was rudely wakened early in the morning by the metallic thud of pineapples on the ground overhead. I was wondering what it meant when a man came down to the O.C.'s room, next to mine, and aroused him with the somewhat exciting news, "Major, the Germans are making an attack." It was not long before the Major was hurrying up the steps to the passage above, and it was not long before I followed, because I always had a horror of being bombed in a dugout. In the passage upstairs all the men were "standing to" with fixed bayonets, and plenty of Mills bombs in their pockets. They were a most cheerful crowd, and really I think that we all felt quite pleased at the excitement. A man came up to me and asked me what weapon I (p. 238) had. I told him I had a fixed bayonet on the end of my walking stick. This did not seem to satisfy him, so he went over to a cupboard and brought me two bombs. I told him to take them away because they might be prematures. He laughed at this and said, "How will you protect yourself, Sir, if the enemy should get into the trench?" I told him I would recite one of my poems. They always put my friends to flight and would probably have the same effect upon my foes.