On my return from leave fourteen days later, towards the end of February, I was posted back to them. The end of February,--a curious period of mental tightening up, of expectation of some colossal push received with a certain incredulity. He’d push all right, but not here. And yet, in the depths of one’s being, there formed a vague apprehension that made one restless and took the taste out of everything. The work seemed unsatisfactory in the new battle positions to which we were moved, a side-step north, seven thousand yards from the front line, just behind Essigny which peeped over a million trenches to St. Quentin. The men didn’t seem to have their hearts in it and one found fault in everything. The new mess, a wooden hut under trees on a hilltop with a deep dugout in it, was very nice, allowing us to bask in the sun whenever it shone and giving a wonderful view over the whole zone, but seemed to lack privacy. One yearned to be alone sometimes and always there was some one there. The subalterns were practically new to me, and although one laughed and talked one couldn’t settle down as in the old days with the Major and Pip Don. The Scots Captain was also occupying the hilltop. It was good to go off on long reconnaissances with him and argue violently on all the known philosophies and literatures, to challenge him to revolver shooting competitions and try and escape the eternal obsession that clouded one’s brain, an uneasiness that one couldn’t place, like the feeling that makes one cold in the pit of the stomach before going down to get ready for a boxing competition, magnified a million times. The weather was warm and sunny after misty dawns and the whole country was white with floating cobwebs. The last touches were being put to the gun position and a narrow deep trench ran behind the guns which were a quarter of a mile beyond the hilltop, down beyond the railway line under camouflage in the open. Word came round that “The Attack,” was for this day, then that, then the other, and the heavy guns behind us made the night tremble with their counter-preparation work, until at last one said, “Please God, they’ll get on with it, and let’s get it over!” The constant cry of “Wolf! Wolf!” was trying. Everybody knew about it and all arrangements were made, extra ammunition, and extra gunners at the positions, details notified as to manning O.P.’s, the probable time at which we should have to open fire being given as ten o’clock at night at extreme range. My Captain, a bloodthirsty Canadian, had gone on leave to the south of France, which meant leaving a subaltern in the wagon line while I had three with me.