"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."
Not one Irishman was speaking really, but a dozen. They came out of their little houses and dug-outs to gather around the brazier; and for every remark I made I received a fusillade in reply. It was an event, an American appearing in the trench in the small hours of the morning.
A trench-toughened, battle-toughened old sergeant was sitting in the doorway of his dug-out, frying a strip of bacon over one rim of the brazier and making tea over the other. The bacon sizzled with an appetizing aroma and a bullet sizzled harmlessly overhead. Behind that wall of sandbags all were perfectly safe, unless a shell came. But who worries about shells? It is like worrying about being struck by lightning when clouds gather in a summer sky.
"It looks like good bacon," I remarked.
"It is that!" said the sergeant. "And the hungrier ye are the better. It's your nose that's telling ye so this minute. I can see that ye're hungry yoursilf!"
"Then you're pretty well fed?"
"Well fed, is it? It's stuffed we are, like the geese that grow the paty- what-do-you-call-it? Eating is our pastime. We eat when we've nothing else to do and when we've got something to do. We get eggs up here—a fine man is Lord Kitchener—yes, sir, eggs up here in the trenches!"
When they seemed to think that I was sceptical, he produced some eggs in evidence.
"And if ye'll not have the bacon, ye'll have a drop of tea. Mind now, while your tongue is trying to be polite, your stomach is calling your tongue a liar!"