With Haig on the Somme

t Time U

d Hawke shortened his bayonet as he saw his ido

s head, and in a quavering voice he cried, "Kamerad! Mercy, officer! I

half its length from the man'

en one Boche and another," grumbled Hawke. "It's one more

overhead. "We were sent out to reconnoitre your trench. You passed us just now, and we hid ourselv

" said Dennis. "We must

ense in risking eight of them," said the Australian corporal. "B

oing over now, and the air was fill

. "You can tell by the white burst and the sound of the fl

tion as he spoke, and instantl

d Dennis, feeling

f properly, 'Arry!" And he exhibited the piece of barbed wire o

in that shook the ground and brought the chalk rattling down into the hollow, but it was the first time he had been und

unn to their prisoner, while the two privates w

up in reserve," replied the Saxon. "Look! they are beginning now. That is a smok

ump-hole, and Hawke and Tiddler instantly faced round, grippin

ate, "or there'll be a rare shermozzle darn 'ere if

dly. "But, I say, Dan, I can't stick this any longer. I w

on, pulling his sleeve. "Se

oud passing on either side of their hole, and his impulse was t

here?" he said to the Saxon, speaking in such exce

ll keep well within it," he added. "They are Prussians on that gun

ay where you are if you lik

his cousin. "What's your plan? I'm with you if

a couple of feet higher than that machine-gun emplacement. I noticed that yesterday. I'm going t

n. "But not as bad as Lone P

ench," said the Saxon very earnestly, "I shall

ennis, and he climbed cautiously up t

pour of the smoke-bombs, and as the two cousins flung themselves on

air seemed alive with singing bullets, and Dennis felt a jar all along

in a straight line," and then no one spoke, as the quartet wormed themselves on their stomachs as fa

e muzzle of his rifle, and a bullet ch

emselves flatter, if such a performance had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-ta

n they had left it behind them. "W

t farther, and then we shall have to face the music of our

usin say, but he made no answer, and at the end of

Aldershot at the regimental sports-but this 'ere takes th

and make for our own trench. Do you know any signal or

stle. Wust of it is, the Boches are so bloomin' ikey-they 'aven't 'arf playe

its perilous way towards their own sandbags, hearing the roar of the fight apparentl

f them all

ness in the momentary intervals between the extinguishing of one star-shell and the bursting of the next. For an instant they would see the line of their tr

it, Harry Hawke thrust two fingers into his g

voices rose in a discordant rendering of a popula

r choice, but Harry Hawke knew what he was doing, and that no German could have imitated

linin'-froo the dy

d inside art till t

hey saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over

nd 'e's 'eard!" cried Tiddler, jumping to

minute they were clambering up the outer face of the p

id Ginger Bill, as the

ne," panted Harry Hawke.

hat Ginger Bill w

ears?" said Ginger Bill, pointing to the hand-to-hand scri

ence due to commissioned rank, clutched the skirt

re's a shell-proof bomb store not a minute's run do

on, Dan; he's right!" And they tore

racket bombs, Dennis and Dan Dunn each laden with two bag

ng and saw nothing but that solid mass of grey German uniforms, wedged li

irm as panic seized it. Nothing human could withstand that terrific shower that rained upon the victorious Saxons, who had been recovering their second wind; and as

d steadily, bomb

down, he saw that it was Bob who spoke, and behind him thirty or forty men of the pla

rs have got a move on them; it's our turn now!" And as Dennis launched a long ball, the men of the

Dan Dunn keeping neck and neck with him on the parapet, and only when he groped to the bottom of h

he shouted, as his own

've got to fall back on the next

he lad, almost overthrown by the jostling crowd with packs and

uld be no doubt about the order, for a staff-captain, his uniform stained with the white cha

s all wrong? We've piled the Saxons up six deep b

nder. Who the deuce are you, young man, to dis

and his clear-cut face turn crimson as he wh

excitement of it all his cousin had gone stark s

at you're doing?" he yelled, flin

d blue in the lurid glare of a big H.E. which burst be