TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

comfort in the fact that it wasn't raining.

It was nearly four o'clock when we found ourselves
in the Hindenburg Main Trench. After telling me to
post the sentries, Leake disappeared down some stairs
to the Tunnel (which will be described later on). The
Company we were relieving had already departed, so
there was no one to give me any information. At
first I didn't even know for certain that we were in
the Front Line. The trench was a sort of gully, deep,
wide, and unfinished looking. The sentries had to
clamber up a bank of loose earth before they could see
over the top. Our Company was only about eighty
strong and its sector was fully 600 yards. The distance
between the sentry-posts made me aware of our in-
adequacy in that wilderness. I had no right to feel
homeless, but I did; and if I had needed to be re-
minded of my forlorn situation as a living creature I
could have done it merely by thinking of a Field
Cashier. Fifty franc notes were comfortable things,
but they were no earthly use up here, and the words
"Field Cashier" would have epitomized my remote-
nessfromsnugness and security, and from all assurance
that I should be alive and kicking the week after next,
But it would soon be Sunday morning; such ideas
weren't wholesome, and there was a certain haggard
curiosity attached to the proceedings; combined with
the self-dramatizing desperation which enabled a
good many of us to worry our way through much
worse emergencies than mine.

When I had posted the exhausted sentries, with as
much cheeriness as I could muster, I went along to
look for the Company on our left. Rather expecting
to find one of our own companies, I came round a
corner to a place where the trench was unusually
wide. There I found myself among a sort of panic

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