For the nearer you get to the front, the more you feel that you are in the way. You are a stray extra piece of baggage; a dead human weight. Every one is doing something definite as a part of the machine except yourself; and in your civilian clothes you feel the self-conscious conspicuousness of appearing on a dancing-floor in a dressing-gown.
Captain P—— was a little way back in another passage. I was alone and in a rough tweed suit—a strange figure in that world of khaki and rifles.
“A German spy! That’s why I am dressed this way, so as not to excite suspicion,” I was going to say, when a call from Captain P—— identified me, and the sentry’s attitude changed as suddenly as if the inspector of police had come along and told a patrolman that I might pass through the fire-lines.
“So it’s you, is it, right from America?” he said. “I’ve a sister living at Nashua, New Hampshire, U. S. A., with three brothers in the United States army.”
Whether he had or not you can judge as well as I by the twinkle in his eye. He might have had five, and again he might not have one. I was a tenderfoot seeing the trenches.
“It’s mesilf that’s going to America when me sarvice in the army is up in one year and six months,” he continued. “That’s some time yet. I’m going if I’m not killed by the Germans. It’s a way that they have, or we wouldn’t be killing them.”
“What are you going to do in America? Enlist in the army?”
“No. I’m looking for a better job. I’m thinking I’ll be one of your millionaires. Shure, but that would be to me taste.”
“What do you think of the Germans?”
“It’s little thinking we’re doing and more shooting. Now do ye know our opinion of them?”