Page:A surgeon in arms.djvu/22

 ting the thick darkness like a flash of lightning, they pushed their faces into the mud and lay perfectly still, in order to avoid becoming the target of a German sniper, or even possibly of some over-nervous Tommy. If there is any place in this war where Napoleon's dictum that "a soldier travels on his stomach" is lived up to in a literal and superlative degree, it is in No Man's Land by night.

Their reconnaissance had lasted some two hours when they started to return to what they thought was their own battalion front. But, as sometimes happens, they had lost their bearings. While they were correct as to the direction toward the Canadian lines in general, they were really crawling to the firing line of one of the brigades to our right. Suddenly Weston, who was leading, found his chest pressing against the sharp point of a bayonet. He heard a voice hissing:

"Who goes there?"

"Two Canadians," he whispered in reply.

"All right; crawl in here, and no funny tricks or we'll fill ye full o' lead." At the point of the bayonet he and his corporal