“It’s about time we gave that tree a spray good for that kind of fungus, from a machine gun!”
A bullet coming from our side swept overhead. One of our own sharpshooters had seen something to shoot at.
“Not giving you much excitement!” said Tommy.
“I suppose I’d get a little if I stood up on the parapet?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t get a ticket for England; you’d get a box!”
“There’s a cemetery just back of the lines if you’d prefer to stay in France!”
I had passed that cemetery with its fresh wooden crosses on my way to the trench. These tender-hearted soldiers who joked with death had placed flowers on the graves of fallen comrades and bought elaborate French funeral wreaths with their meagre pay—which is another side of Mr. Thomas Atkins. There is sentiment in him. Yes, he’s loaded with sentiment, but not for the movies.
“Keep your head down there, Eames!” called a corporal. “I don’t want to be taking an inventory of your kit.”
Eames did not even realise that his head was above the parapet. The hardest thing to teach a soldier is not to expose himself. Officers keep iterating warnings and then forget to practise what they preach. That morning a soldier had been shot through the heart and arm sideways back of the trench. He had lain down unnoticed for a nap in the sun, it was supposed. When he awoke, presumably he sat up and yawned and Herr Schmidt, from some platform in a tree, had a bloody reward for his patience.
The next morning I saw the British take their revenge. Some German who thought that he could not be seen in the mist of dawn was walking along the German parapet. What hopes! Four or five men took careful aim and fired. That dim figure collapsed in a way that was convincing.