The nations like Kilkenny cats,
Full of hate that never dies out,
Tied tail to tail, hung o'er a rope,
Still strive to tear each other's eyes out.

The company came to a halt in the village; we marched for three miles, and the morning being a hot one we were glad to fall out and lie down on the pavement, packs well up under our shoulders and our legs stretched out at full length over the kerbstone into the gutter. The sweat stood out in beads on the men's foreheads and trickled down their cheeks on to their tunics. The white dust of the roadway settled on boots, trousers, and putties, and rested in fine layers on haversack folds and cartridge pouches. Rifles and bayonets, spotless in the morning's inspection, had lost all their polished lustre and were gritty to the touch. We carried a heavy load, two hundred rounds of ball cartridge, a loaded rifle with five rounds in magazine, a pack stocked with overcoat, spare underclothing, and other field necessaries, a haversack containing twenty-four hours rations, and sword and entrenching tool per man. We were equipped for battle and were on our way towards the firing line.

A low-set man with massive shoulders, bull-neck and heavy jowl had just come out of an estaminet, a mess-tin of beer in his hand, and knife and fork stuck in his putties.

"Going up to the slaughter line, mateys?" he enquired, an amused smile hovering about his eyes, which took us all in with one penetrating glance.

"Yes," I replied. "Have you been long out here?"

"About a matter of nine months."

"You've been lucky," said Mervin, my mate.

"I haven't gone West yet, if that's what you mean," was the answer. "'Oo are you?"

"The London Irish."

"Territorials?"

"That's us," someone said.

"First time up this way?"

"First time."

"I knew that by the size of your packs," said the man, the smile reaching his lips. "Bloomin' pack-horses you look like. If you want a word of advice, sling your packs over a hedge, keep a tight grip of your mess-tin, and ram your spoon and fork into your putties. My pack went West at Mons."

"You were there then?"

"Blimey, yes." was the answer.

"How did you like it?"

"Not so bad," said the man. "'Ave a drink and pass the mess-tin round. There is only one bad shell, that's the one that 'its you, and if you're unlucky it'll come your way. The same about the bullet with your number on it; it can't miss you if it's made for you. And if ever you go into a charge—Think of your pals, matey!" he roared at the man who was greedily gulping down the contents of the mess-tin, "You're swigging all the stuff yourself. For myself I don't care much for this beer, it has no guts in it, one good English pint is worth an ocean of this dashed muck. Good-bye"—we were moving off, "and good luck to you!"

Mervin, perspiring profusely, marched by my side. He and I have been great comrades, we have worked, eaten, and slept together, and committed sin in common against regimental regulations. Mervin has been a great traveller, he has dug for gold in the Yukon, grown oranges in Los Angeles, tapped for rubber in Camerango (I don't know where the place is, but I love the name), and he can eat a tin of bully beef, and relish the meal. He is the only man in our section who can enjoy it, one of us cares only for cheese, and few grind biscuits when they can beg bread.

A battalion is divided into four companies, a company contains four platoons made up of sections of unequal strength; our section consisted of thirteen—there are only four boys left now, Mervin has been killed, five have been wounded, two have become stretcher bearers, and one has left us to join another company in which one of his mates is placed. Poor Mervin! How sad it was to lose him, and much sadder is it for his sweetheart in England. He was engaged; often he told me of his dreams of a farm, a quiet cottage and a garden at home when the war came to an end. Somewhere in a soldier's grave he sleeps. I know not where he lies, but one day, if the fates spare me, I will pay a visit to the resting-place of a true comrade and a staunch friend.

Outside the village we formed into single file. It was reported that the enemy shelled the road daily, and only three days before the Royal Engineers lost thirty-seven men when going up to the trenches on the same route. In the village all was quiet, the cafÉs were open, and old men, women, and boys were about their daily work as usual. There were very few young men of military age in the place; all were engaged in the business of war.

A file marched on each side of the road. Mervin was in front of me; Stoner, a slender youth, tall as a lance and lithe as a poplar, marched behind, smoking a cigarette and humming a tune. He worked as a clerk in a large London club whose members were both influential and wealthy. When he joined the army all his pay was stopped, and up to the present he has received from his employers six bars of chocolate and four old magazines. His age is nineteen, and his job is being kept open for him. He is one of the cheeriest souls alive, a great worker, and he loves to listen to the stories which now and again I tell to the section. When at St. Albans he spent six weeks in hospital suffering from tonsilitis. The doctor advised him to stay at home and get his discharge; he is still with us, and once, during our heaviest bombardment, he slept for a whole eight hours in his dug-out. All the rest of us remained awake, feeling certain that our last hour had come.

Teak and Kore, two bosom chums, marched on the other side of the road. Both are children almost; they may be nineteen, but neither look it; Kore laughs deep down in his throat, and laughs heartiest when his own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a strong mould, but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be a clerk in business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing of his profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns; these amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is known to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white potato. Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in argument. He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not fingering one he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.

Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal. The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him, in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses. For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say, he delights in the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked Tennyson about with him.

Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.

We were coming near the trenches. In front, the two lines of men stretched on as far as the eye could see; we were near the rear and singing Macnamara's Band, a favourite song with our regiment. Suddenly a halt was called. A heap of stones bounded the roadway, and we sat down, laying our rifles on the fine gravel.

The crash came from the distance, probably five hundred yards in front, and it sounded like a waggon-load of rubble being emptied on a landing and clattering down a flight of stairs.

"What's that?" asked Stoner, flicking the ash from the tip of his cigarette with the little finger.

"Some transport has broken down."

"Perhaps it's a shell," I ventured, not believing what I said.

"Oh! your grandmother."

Whistling over our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates. Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all the blood had rushed away from his face. Teak's mouth was a little open, his cigarette, sticking to his upper lip, hung down quivering, and the ash was falling on his tunic; a smile almost of contempt played on Pryor's face, and Goliath yawned. At the time I wondered if he were posing. He spoke:—

"There's only one bad shell, you know," he said. "It hasn't come this way yet. See that woman?" He pointed at the field where the shell had exploded. At the far end a woman was working with a hoe, her head bowed over her work, and her back bent almost double. Two children, a boy and a girl, came along the road hand in hand, and deep in a childish discussion. The world, the fighting men, and the bursting shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own little affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a sensation of surprise—surprise because we were not more afraid of the bursting shrapnel.

"Quick march!"

We got to our feet and resumed our journey. We were now passing through a village where several houses had been shattered, and one was almost levelled to the ground. But beside it, almost intact, although not a pane of glass remained in the windows, stood a cafÉ. A pale stick of a woman in a white apron, with arms akimbo, stood on the threshold with a toddling infant tugging at her petticoats.

Several French soldiers were inside, seated round a table, drinking beer and smoking. One man, a tall, angular fellow with a heavy beard, seemed to be telling a funny story; all his mates were laughing heartily. A horseman came up at this moment, one of our soldiers, and his horse was bleeding at the rump, where a red, ugly gash showed on the flesh.

"Just a splinter of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler."

"What did you think of it," I called to Stoner.

"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in London."

"And you, Pryor?"

"I went cold all over for a minute."

"Bill?"

"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out one of our popular rhymes.

Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys
To drive the Kaiser balmy.
And we'll smash up that fool Von Kluck
And all his bloomin' army!

We came to a halt again, this time alongside a Red Cross motor ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was seated; his coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling down his arm on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with his right leg bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked dazed, but was smoking a cigarette.

"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.

"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."

"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a wound like that. You're damned lucky, and its your first journey!"

"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.

"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the old regiment left, and it makes me wish this damned business was over and done with."

"Ye don't like war, then."

"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks, and cold, and heat, and everything connected with the —— work."

"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing round his lips. "God's with us, you know."

"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on God," I remarked.

"Blimey! talk about God!" said the regular.

"There's more of the damned devil in this than there is of anything else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church, and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."

"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.

"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work, never could stomach it."

The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.

We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the province of death and desolation. We passed the last ploughman. He was a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home, now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green grasses, the old farm holed by a thousand shells, the old plough, and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other world for the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of the destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the damage which had been done.

We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive shells in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast of burden—the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.

We were marched to a red brick building with a shrapnel-shivered roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.

"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.

As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time I was in England as a marker at our rifle butts, cut through the air, and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.

"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.

"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.

"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere, and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall over the head of the laughing Frenchman, who was busily rolling a fresh cigarette.

Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance, with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath, "This way to the war."

The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front shells were exploding, and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters sung over our heads, for the most part delving into the field on either side, but sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a pile of earth and dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The floor was paved with bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt; there was a general air of cleanliness about the place, the level floor, the smooth sides, and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer walking along the top, and well back from the side, counted us as we walked along in line with him. He had taken charge of our section as a working party, and when he turned to me in making up his tally I saw that he wore a ribbon on his breast.

"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How did you get it?" he called up to the man.

"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve, thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?" he asked.

"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."

We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood, and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who are you?"

"The London Irish."

"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ——," he said, rubbing a miry hand across the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse luck! Are you from Chelsea?"

"Yes."

"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the two men lay.

They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity. Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in something else, a problem which he failed to solve.

One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless body in the trench.

"Brothers," he said.

For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs. Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.

The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church, but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.

"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.

"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even when I read it in the papers at home, but now—"

"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer, "and they always keep potting at the place."

"But have we?"

"I dunno."

"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"

"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.

"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.

"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench, "never moves me. You'll feel it a bit being just new out, but when you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."

In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion "stopped a packet."