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"Rats are the worst plague," said a colonel, coming out of the
battalion headquarters, where he had a hole large enough for a bed and
table. "There are thousands of rats in this part of the line, and
they're audacious devils. In the dugout next door the straw at night
writhes with them. . . I don't mind the mice so much. One of them
comes to dinner on my table every evening, a friendly little beggar
who is very pally with me."
We looked out above the mine-craters, a chaos of tumbled earth, where
our trenches ran so close to the enemy's that it was forbidden to
smoke or talk, and where our sappers listened with all their souls in
their ears to any little tapping or picking which might signal
approaching upheaval. The coats of some French soldiers, blown up long
ago by some of these mines, looked like the blue of the chicory flower
growing in the churned-up soil. . . The new mine was not fired that
afternoon, up to the time of my going away. But it was fired next day,
and I wondered whether the gloomy boy had gone up with it.


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