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There was a continuous rumble and grumble of bombardment while we were going up with the rations on the day after I got back from leave. As we came over the hill beyond Bray the darkness toward Albert was lit with the glare of explosions that blinked and bumped. Dottrel! remarked that there seemed to be a bit of a mix-up, which was his way of saying that he didn't altogether like the look of things that evening. When we arrived at the ration dump the quarter- master-sergeant told us that the battalion had been standing to for the past two hours. It was possible that the Boches might be coming across. "C" com- pany was in the front line. The noise was subsiding, so I went up there, leaving Joe to pay his nightly call at battalion headquarters. Stumbling and splashing up a communication trench known as Canterbury Avenue, with the parcel of smoked salmon stuffed into my haversack, I felt that smoked salmon wasn't much of an antidote for people who had been putting up with all that shell- fire. Still, it was something. . . . Round the next corner I had to flatten myself against the wall of that wet ditch, for someone was being carried down on a stretcher. An extra stretcher-bearer walking behind told me it was Corporal Price of "C" company. "A rifle-grenade got him... looks as if he's a goner...." His face was only a blur of white in the gloom; then, with the drumming of their boots on the trench- boards, Corporal Price left the War behind him. I remembered him vaguely as a quiet little man in Durley's platoon. No use offering him smoked sal- mon, I thought, as I came to the top of Canterbury Avenue, and, as usual, lost my way in the maze of saps and small trenches behind the front line. Wat- 330