After Winston Churchill had spent about a week in the line he received a field telegram informing him that the Corps Commander wished to see him at four o'clock at Merville and that a car would be waiting at the Rouge Croix Crossroads at three fifteen. Winston did not relish the prospect of "traipsing across three miles of muddy fields, the greater part under the observation of the enemy by daylight, and then toiling back all the way in the evening" but he had no option but to obey orders. He and his soldier servant were scarcely two hundred yards away from the trenches when they heard "the shriek of approaching shells." Turning around he saw four or five of them bursting over the trenches they had left. He gave no thought to them but "toiled and sweated on" until at last he reached the rendezvous, only to hear, after a long wait, that there had been a mistake, the car had gone to the wrong place and it was now too late for him to see the General. Winston inquired what was the nature of the business which caused the General to bring him out of the line? "Oh," said the Staff Officer airily, "it was nothing in particular. He thought as he was coming up this way he would like to have a talk with you." Winston was not unnaturally indignant as he now began "another long, sliding, slippery, splashing waddle back to the trenches. ...The sedentary life of a Cabinet Minister which I had quitted scarcely a month before, had not left me much opportunity to keep fit. Tired out and very thirsty, I put my head into the nearest Company Mess for a drink. 'Hello,' they said, 'you're in luck today.' "I haven't seen much of it," I replied. "I've been made a fool of." "Well, you're in luck all the same," said the Grenadier Officers." Their allusions to his luck were lost on him until, when he approached his own shelter, he was met and intercepted by his sergeant: "We have shifted your kit to Mr. __________'s dugout Sir." "Why?" I asked. "Yours has been blown up Sir." "Any harm done?" "Your kit's all right Sir, but _________was killed. Better not go in there, Sir, it's an awful mess." ..."When did it happen?" I asked. "About five minutes after you left, Sir. A whizzbang came in through the roof and blew his head off."

      "Suddenly," wrote Winston, "I felt my irritation against General _________ pass completely from my mind. All sense of grievance departed in a flash...How thoughtful it had been of him to wish to see me again, and to show courtesy to a subordinate...And then upon these quaint reflections there came the strong sensation that a hand had been stretched out to move me in the nick of time from a fatal spot."

       Winston has written: "Chance, Fortune, Luck, Destiny, Fate, Providence seem to me only different ways of expressing the same thing, to wit, that a man's own contribution to his life story is continually dominated by an external superior power."

Cheryl Lehman