(1) Guides who do not know the way, and say so at the outset.
(2) Guides who do not know the way, but leave it to you to discover
the fact.
There are no other kinds of guides.
The pace is down to a mile an hour now, except in the case of men in
the tail of the line, who are running rapidly. It is a curious but
quite inexplicable fact that if you set a hundred men to march in
single file in the dark, though the leading man may be crawling like a
tortoise, the last man is compelled to proceed at a profane double if
he is to avoid being left behind and lost.
Still, everybody gets there somehow, and in due course the various
Company Commanders are enabled to telephone to their respective
Battalion Headquarters the information that the Relief is completed.
For this relief, much thanks!
After that the outgoing Battalion files slowly out, and the newcomers
are left gloomily contemplating their new abiding-place, and
observing--
"I wonder if there is _any_ Division in the whole blessed
Expeditionary Force, besides ours, which ever does a single damn thing
to keep its trenches in repair!"