ten o'clock
The same interior hollowness made me chafe at delay and long to be started -- to be busied in the excitement of action -- to be looking back on it all as a thing of the past . The morning wore on . There was bustling in the communication trenches , pack-mules bringing up ammunition , and men shouldering cases of bombs . At ten o'clock the C.O. came round the line . Now that the imminence of the attack had made unpleasantly real his duty of sending us over the top , he had grown quite fatherly . `` Do n't get killed , '' he said . `` I ca n't spare any of you -- battalion dam-depleted already ... .