"Good-night!" called the Irish.
"Good-night and good luck!"
"Tell them in America that the Irish are still fighting!"
"Good luck, and may your travelling be aisy; but if ye trip, may ye fall into a gold mine!"
We were back with the British regulars; and here, also, many of the men remained up around the braziers.
The hours of duty of the few on watch do not take many of the twenty-four hours. One may sleep when he chooses in the little houses behind the breastworks. Night melts into day and day into night in the monotony of mud and sniping rifle-fire. By-and-by it is your turn to go into reserve; your turn to get out of your clothes—for there are no pyjamas for officers or men in these "crawls," as they are sometimes called. Boots off is the only undressing; boots off and puttees unloosed, which saves the feet. Yes, by-and-by the march back to the rear, where there are tubs filled with hot water and an outfit of clean clothes awaiting you, and nothing to do but rest and sleep.
"How soon after we leave the trenches may we cheer?" officers have been asked in the dead of winter, when water stood deep over the porous mud and morning found a scale of ice around the legs.
You, nicely testing the temperature of your morning tub; you, satisfied only with faucets of hot and cold water and a mat to stand on—you know nothing about the joy of bathing. Your bath is a mere part of the daily routine of existence. Try the trenches and get itchy with vermin; then you will know that heaven consists of soap and hot water.
No bad odour assails your nostrils wherever you may go in the British lines. Its cleanliness, if nothing else, would make British army comradeship enjoyable. My wonder never ceases how Tommy keeps himself so neat; how he manages to shave every day and get a part, at least, of the mud off his uniform. This care makes him feel more as if he were "at home" in barracks.
From the breastworks, Captain P———and I went for a stroll in the Village, or the site of the village, silent except for the occasional singing of a bullet. When we returned he lighted the candle on a stick stuck into the wall of his earth-roofed house and suggested a nap. It was three o'clock in the morning. Now I could see that my rubber boots had grown so heavy because I was carrying so much of the soil of Northern France. It looked as if I had gout in both feet—the over- bandaged, stage type of gout—which were encased in large mud poultices. I tried to stamp off the incubus, but it would not go. I tried scraping one foot on the other, and what I scraped off seemed to reattach itself as fast as I could remove it.