It was night in the front line and no moon, or the moon was hidden. There was a strafe going on. The Tok Emmas were angry. And the artillery on both sides were looking for the Tok Emmas.  
Tok Emma, I may explain for the blessed dwellers in whatever far happy island there be that has not heard of these things, is the crude language of Mars. He has not time to speak of a trunk mortar battery, for he is always in a hurry, and so he calls them T. M.‘s. But Bellona might not hear him saying T. M., for all the din that she makes: might think that he said D. N; and so he calls it Tok Emma. Ak, Beer, C, Don: this is the alphabet of Mars.
 
And the huge minnies were throwing old limbs out of No Man’s Land into the frontline trench, and shells were rasping down through the air that seemed to resist them until it was torn to pieces: they burst and showers of mud came down from heaven. Aimlessly, as it seemed, shells were bursting now and then in the air, with a flash intensely red: the smell of them was drifting down the trenches.
 
In the middle of all this Bert Butterworth was hit. “Only in the foot,” his pals said. “Only!” said Bert. They put him on a stretcher and carried him down the trench. They passed Bill Britterling, standing in the mud, an old friend of Bert’s. Bert’s face, twisted with pain, looked up to Bill for some sympathy.
 
“Lucky devil,” said Bill.
 
Across the way on the other side of No Man’s Land there was mud the same as on Bill’s side: only the mud over there stank; it didn’t seem to have been kept clean somehow. And th............