would. ’Arf crazy, ’e’s been, tearing ’is clothes off and cursing the war and the Fritzes. Almost like a shell-shock case, ’e seems. It’s his third time out. A Blighty one don’t last a man long nowadays, sir.” As I went off into the gloom I could still hear the uncouth howlings.
“Well, well; this is a damned depressing spot to arrive at!” I thought, while I lay awake trying to keep warm and munching a bit of chocolate, in a narrow segment of a canvas shed about four feet high. Beyond the army-blanket which served as a partition, two officers were chattering interminably in rapid Welsh voices. They were comparing their experiences at some squalid pleasure house in Rouen, and their disclosures didn’t make the War seem any jollier. It was, in fact, the most disgusting little conversation I’d ever listened to. But what right had I to blame the poor devils for trying to have a good time before they went up to the Line? … Nevertheless, the War seemed to be doing its best to make me feel unheroic.
Next day I found the 5th I.B.D. Mess dispiriting. I knew nobody, and it wasn’t a place where people