But the night is wearing on. It is half-past one--time to knock off
work. Tired men, returning from ration-drawing or sap-digging, throw
themselves down and fall dead asleep in a moment. Only the sentries,
with their elbows on the parapet, maintain their sleepless watch. From
behind the enemy's lines comes a deep boom--then another. The big guns
are waking up again, and have decided to commence their day's work by
speeding our empty ration-wagons upon their homeward way. Let them!
So long as they refrain from practising direct hits on our front-line
parapet, and disturbing our brief and hardly-earned repose, they may
fire where they please. The ration train is well able to look after
itself.
"A whiff o' shrapnel will dae nae harrm to thae strawberry-jam
pinchers!" observes Private Tosh bitterly, rolling into his dugout. By
this opprobrious term he designates that distinguished body of men,
the Army Service Corps. A prolonged diet of plum-and-apple jam has
implanted in the breasts of the men in the trenches certain dark and
unworthy suspicions concerning the entire altruism of those responsible
for the distribution of the Army's rations.