Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/202

170 "About time they knocked off for luncheon." He laughed as he read the surprise and distaste in our faces.

“Friend Boche is methodical if anything. He usually has his hour for a comfy feed."

It was evident that the fire from the other side had diminished. In desperation some of us took the insufferably hot helmets from our heads.

Trusting to our guide's perfect faith in the German schedule, we followed him across a field and were disturbed by nothing more than an occasional shriek from the sky.

"I told the driver," he said to Williams, to have the cars at Snipers' House."

If ever a name suggested a dramatic incident of stealthy warfare that one did, but, in common with most of the soldiers' christening of landmarks, its origin was clouded; nor, when we had come to it, did it offer any evidence of its own. It was the familiar roofless quadrangle of shell-shattered walls. Whatever its romantic past it was a prosaic rendezvous now for members of the transport service, Near by, a narrow tramway descended to a communication trench and ambled to the front line.

We scurried from the shelter of Snipers' House along the devastated roads to brigade headquarters.