CHAPTER VII

HOW THE ROYALS HELD THE BLUFF: AN EPISODE OF TRENCH WARFARE


I

_Waiting_

The beginning of March found me with a battalion of The Royals in a
rather battered Belgian town. Its centre received a good deal of
attention from enemy artillery, but it offered two attractions which
brought in officers from divisions all around. After all, to men
accustomed to living in the trenches, the atmosphere was one of almost
Sabbath peace. The hall where 'The Fancies' made much of the humours of
trench life to uproariously delighted audiences was crowded out night
after night. You could not find anywhere greater zest and enjoyment. The
striking comradeship of soldiering, the common experience of audience
and actors, and the abandonment of all thought for the morrow, gave that
impression of cheerful carelessness the root of which is not happiness
but the conviction that the future is so uncertain and the possibilities
so dreadful that he is wise who lives for the hour only, even as the
hour may snatch life from him. I thought I knew the head in front of me,
and, leaning forward, saw it was my brother-in-law. It has always struck
me as quaint that he, who had been with his battery for a year and a
half, and I, who had been out for nine months, should have met again
under such circumstances. I had pictured a stricken field and much