Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,
When you're in the trenches come and visit you,
They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,
Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.
They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,
They come in close formation, in column and platoon.
There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:
For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.

"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like shells—especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a mile away."

"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.

"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is always on the go."

"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.

"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one I met in the trench when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was looking at me, I could see its eyes—"

"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.

"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."

"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own part I am more afraid of ——"

"What?"

"—— the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"

I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet, and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me. Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp, penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing, agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's head.

When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile cries that slowly died away into silence.

Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.

The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines. I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony. Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.

"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me pray every time I go up."

"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy (nice)."

"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a bad locality."

He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag, and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed a look of pity on Pryor.

"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I asked.

"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin' you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ——"

Bill paused, sweating at every pore.

"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the cushiest in the world."