Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/322

262 one's dug-out listening to bright music, whilst shells wailed overhead. Never, perhaps, had the war appeared more ugly.' 'At 2 A.M. we went down the trench as arranged, and sat with the men in their dug-out. They drank a cup of tea, and then drew lots as to who should share my flask with me. I was armed, let me add, with a flask and a fat cigar. Thus nowadays do we go to war! The Infantry went over the parapet at about 2 A.M. whilst we waited, waited. The password was "How 's your father?" Answer, "All right!" At 4 A.M. our guns opened, roaring continuously for half an hour. At about 5 we received orders to fire, and darted down to our guns. The Germans were retaliating in a desultory fashion. We fired fifteen rounds from each gun in as many minutes. The flash was enormous and lit up the whole trench, so that the men staggering under the bombs and bending over the strange-looking weapon might have been demons in a corner of Inferno.' 'It snows—all the morning it has snowed' (February 1916). 'Many