God rest ye, merry gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born on Christmas Day.

Outside the wind was howling across Flanders with a doleful whine, rising now and then into a savage violence which rattled the windowpanes, and beyond the booming of its lower notes was the faint, dull rumble of distant guns.

“Christmas Eve!” said an officer. “Nineteen hundred and fifteen years ago⁠ ⁠… and now⁠—this!”