So I decided I would take a chance.
"Well," I said, as I took the steel hat off, "I'll just keep this
bonnet handy and slip it on if I see Percy coming."
But later I was mighty glad of even an ill-fitting steel helmet!
Several staff officers from the Highland Brigade had joined the
Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour by now. Affable, pleasant gentlemen
they were, and very eager to show us all there was to be seen. And
they had more sights to show their visitors than most hosts have!
We were on ground now that had been held by the Germans before the
British had surged forward all along this line in the April battle.
Their old trenches, abandoned now, ran like deep fissures through the
soil. They had been pretty well blasted to pieces by the British
bombardment, but a good many of their deep, concrete dugouts had
survived. These were not being used by the British here, but were
saved in good repair as show places, and the officers who were our
guides took us down into some of them.
Rarely comfortable they must have been, too! They had been the homes
of German officers, and the Hun officers did themselves very well
indeed when they had the chance. They had electric light in their
cave houses. To be sure they had used German wall paper, and
atrociously ugly stuff it was, too. But it pleased their taste, no
doubt. Mightily amazed some of Fritz's officers must have been, back
in April, as they sat and took their ease in these luxurious
quarters, to have Jock come tumbling in upon them, a grenade in each
hand!
Our men might have used these dugouts, and been snug enough in them,
but they preferred air and ventilation, and lived in little huts
above the ground.
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