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Billy was ready for breakfast a second or two ahead of me, and he started up the steps, out through the door of the dugout. "I'm coming," I called, and grabbed my mess-tin and went up the steps two at a time. I reached the top and the door of the dugout, and, simultaneously, a roar and rush of air struck me, and I was thrown to the floor, stunned for the moment.
Cooking, at the times I write about, consisted of making innumerable brews of tea, and opening tins of bully and Maconochie. Occasionally bacon had to be fried in a mess-tin lid. One day my man soared off into culinary fancies and curried a Maconochie. I have never quite forgiven him for this; I am nearly right again now. These two soldier servants never had to leave the trench.
The next morning, his servant being as usual somewhere else, he ventured to ask for a little shaving water, in French of the first-steps variety. "Oh, monsieur speaks French," she answered, quite ignoring the mess-tin he held out. "Why did you not tell me?" this last with an accusing glance at A , the senior subaltern.
I remember how on an occasion when the shelling was very heavy one man engaged himself in making soup as coolly as if nothing was happening until the earth knocked up by the shells began to drop into the mess-tin, when he gave us his opinion of the Boches in his own forcible vernacular.
You bolt them in thirty seconds, and run back to strap your mess-tin on your saddle, put the last touches to your harness, and hook in the team. Of course we sleep in our cloaks, and wear them till about eight, when the sun gets strength. Then we seize a chance to roll them at a halt, and strap them in front of the riding saddle. To return to to-day.
During the storm our mainmast was struck by the lightning, which split a piece off it from top to bottom, but fortunately did not disable it; but a sad mishap befell one of our men while sitting at mess at the time, for he was struck dead, his shirt being burnt in places like tinder, and his mess-tin being likewise turned black, while the top of a bayonet that was standing close to the unfortunate man was melted like lead.
He was walking the field soaked to the skin, perishing from cold produced by lack of food, continuously hitching in his belt to keep his "mess-tin" quiet, and on the brink of collapse. He happened to kick something soft. He picked the object up and to his extreme delight found it to be a piece of black bread, soaked with water, and thickly covered with mud.
They did it like they was sent there to kill somebody, and they meant doin' their job thorough an' competent. Afore I come this trip on the Continong I used to think a Frenchman was good for nothing but fiddlin' an' dancin' an' makin' love. 'Ere's luck to 'im," and he drained the mess-tin.
The hut, accordingly, presented a vista of twenty-one beds, eleven along one wall and ten along the other, the stove and its pipe being the sole interruption of the symmetrical perspective. Above the beds ran a continuous shelf, bearing the hut-inhabitants' equipment, or at least that portion of it great-coat, water-bottle, mess-tin, etc. not continually in use.
'Talkin' o' transferring to the trenches, said the Bombardier putting down his empty mess-tin and producing his pipe. 'Reminds me o' a Left'nant we 'ad join us a month or two back. It was the time you chaps was away attached to that other Division, so you didn't know 'im. 'E'd bin with a Battery right through, but 'e got a leave an' when 'e come back from England 'e was sent to us.
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