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could make out the vague unearthly shapes of their own wire entanglements. Sergeant Hobson indicated a piece of soiled, white tape in the mud that led them to the gap in their own wire.
    Now they truly were in No Man's Land.
    They crawled on, their progress achingly slow. Every time a flare bloomed in the sky, they would press themselves into the mud. It took them nearly an hour to crawl through the blasted landscape -- peppered as it was with shell holes - up the gently inclining slope towards Harcourt Wood. About them Atkins could hear the foraging corpse rats feasting on the bodies of the fallen. They reached the German wire, some thirty yards short of a low stone wall that bordered the wood. There was a muffled shout, some distance over to the left and a brief spatter of machine gun fire, then nothing.
    More waiting.
    Hobson gestured to the left and rolled with a barely perceptible splash into a shallow shell hole just short of the wire. The others followed. Atkins slithered over the shallow lip to join them and found himself in a pool of water. Hobson beckoned them closer with a finger. They gathered their heads together while Hobson spoke in a low, slow voice.
    "Wirecutters get ahead. Blood and I will cover you. If it all goes off, get back here sharpish. Got it? Just don't take all night about it."
    Atkins nodded. As they crawled out of the shell hole toward the wire, Hobson and Gutsy took up their positions on the lip of the crater, pistols cocked and ready.
    Atkins looked at Porgy as they reached the entanglement. Porgy crawled forward with his cutters, slipped the blades around the wire and snipped. There was a sharp tink and a dull tinny twang recoiled along the wire. Atkins froze until long after the sound died away, expecting a burst of machine gun fire to cut them down at any moment. But nothing happened. Porgy cut again.
    Atkins gripped the wire between his own cutter blades and snipped, and snipped again. It took nearly an hour to cut though the entanglement, working his way along on his back under the thicket of Jerry wire until his arms ached and his muscles burned, but eventually it was done. A section of wire five or six yards across had been freed from its mooring.
    They made their way back to the shell hole.
    "All present and correct?" whispered Hobson. "Good. Let's be off home shall we?"
    As they began the slow crawl back towards their own lines, something gave way under Atkins' palm and his left arm sank up to his elbow in the thick mud. A bubble formed on the surface and popped, releasing a cloying, sickly stench. His hand had gone through a corpse's gas-distended stomach. Disturbed, several corpulent rats squeaked indignantly and darted off. He heaved, retching up several lumps of army stew and pulled his hand out of the mud. In an attempt to put some distance, any distance, between him and the corpse, he planted a knee down only to feel a crack of bones somewhere just below the surface of the slime. A red flare went up bathing everything in a hellish glow. Atkins looked down with horror to see the decomposing face of a French soldier lit by the lurid light, making shadows dance in the empty sockets of its eyes.
    A burst of machine gun fire zipped over their heads. Hobson quickly indicated to a large Minnie crater with a flick of his hand. They headed for it, rolling down into the relative shelter of its shadow.
    Unable to stop himself, Atkins slipped helplessly down the slick wet sides into the slurry-filled basin at the bottom, before coming up against wet muddy cloth. Fearing another corpse, he looked about wildly and met the gaze of a German soldier staring back with the same intensity of fear and surprise. They'd stumbled on a German patrol sheltering in the same shell-hole.
    Atkins knew he had seconds to act. He clamped a muddy hand over the German's mouth. The Hun clawed desperately at his wrist. Atkins adjusted his position so he was astride the man's chest and was able to use his knee to pin