James Norman Hall

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1916

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES NORMAN HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published May 1916

TO TOMMY OF THE GREAT WAR WHO IS ADDING IMMORTAL LUSTER TO THE NAME OF ATKINS

Note

This brief narrative is by no means a complete record of life in a battalion of one of Lord Kitchener's first armies. It is, rather, a story in outline, a mere suggestion of that life as it is lived in the British lines along the western front. If those who read gain thereby a more intimate view of trench warfare, and of the men who are so gallantly and cheerfully laying down their lives for England, the purpose of the writer will have been accomplished.

The diagram which appears on the front and rear covers of the book is a partially conventionalized design illustrating some features of trench construction mentioned in Chapter VI. For obvious reasons it is not drawn to scale, and although it is a truthful representation of a typical segment of the British line, it is not an exact sketch of any existing sector.

April, 1916.

Contents

Joining Up1

Rookies9

The Mob in Training17

Ordered Abroad39

The Parapet-etic School55

Private Holloway, Professor of Hygiene69

Midsummer Calm92

Under Cover108

Billets129

New Lodgings144

"Sitting Tight"177