"Yes," he said, "you have come to an unhealthy spot; still it may be good for you. The blessed Huns thought they were going to break through here about last September when the battle of Wipers was fought. They had six hundred thousand men to our hundred and fifty thousand. Then that blooming Kaiser made up his mind that he would break through our lines, and get to Calais. Yes, it was a touch and go with us. Fancy four to one, and they had all the advantage in big guns and ammunition. You think those big guns? Wait till you have heard Jack Johnson and Black Maria. Talk about hell! Hell was never as bad as the battle of Wipers. I thought we were licked once. I was in the part where our line was the thinnest, and we saw 'em coming towards us in crowds; there seemed to be millions of 'em; we had to rake out every cook and bottle-washer on the show. Lots of our men were fresh to the job, too, and had never smelt powder, or felt the touch of steel. But, by gosh, we let 'em know! Four to one, my boy, and we licked 'em, in spite of their big guns and their boasting. Aren't you proud of being a British Tommy?"
Tom listened with wide, staring eyes and compressed lips. There within a mile or two of the battle line he could picture all of which the sergeant spoke. As he looked he could see the brown line of earth away in the distance, and could discern too, here and there, dotted along this brown line, clouds of black smoke. All around him our guns were booming, while the distant sounds of the German guns reached him.
"Ay, it's a bit unhealthy," went on the sergeant, "but you will get used to it after a bit. There, hear that?"
Tom listened and heard the screaming of a shell in the air; the note it made was at first low, but it rose higher and higher and then dropped again.
"When the note gets to about B flat," said the sergeant, "you may know it's soon going to fall, and as soon as it has touched the ground the shell bursts and tears a big hole up."
"Are many killed?" asked Tom.
"Ay, there's a good lot of casualties every day, but not so much as there was at the second battle of Wipers. That was fair terrible. You see, the Germans could not drive us back nor break our lines. That was why they started bombarding the city. I was here and saw it. Man, you should have heard the women screaming, and seen the people flying for their lives. Whole streets of houses were burning, and all the time shells were falling and bursting. How many people were killed here God only knows, but there must have been hundreds of women and children. But what did those dirty swine of Germans care! They could not break our lines, and they had lost a hundred and fifty thousand men, so they turned their big guns upon the city. 'We can kill Belgian women and children, anyhow,' they said, 'and we can smash up the old town.' Are you a bit jumpy?"
"No n-n-no;—that is, a little bit," said Tom.
"Oh, it's quite quiet now," replied the sergeant. "I will walk through with you if you like and show you round. This is the great square; one of the biggest in the world. I saw it before it was bombarded; the Cathedral and the Cloth Hall were just wonderful; see what they are now! knocked into smithereens. See the trees around, how they are twisted and burnt? That house there I saw shelled myself. I had got a bit used to the shelling by that time, but I tell you it gave me a turn. It was the biggest house in the Square, and a great bomb caught it fair in the face; it seemed as though the whole world was shaking, and the noise fair deafened you. The house went down as though it were cardboard, and other houses around fell as though to keep it company, while others caught fire. Ay, they're sweet creatures, are those German swine."
"Doan't you hate 'em?" asked Tom.