"I thought we were bound for Bethune," Bowdy Benners said as he lifted a rasher of bacon from the lid of his messtin.
"You thought," spluttered Snogger. "Gawd Almighty, man, you're not paid to think in the army! If you think too much you'll find yourself damned unlucky. Anyhow, you'll find things hot in the trenches when you get there this time, I'm telling you," he continued, lowering his voice. "There's big things in the wind. We are going up by slow stages. I'm glad that we're goin'. I don't like these rests; there's too much damned work to do. Give me the trenches when I'm on the look-out for a cushy time. It's better than 'ere."
The sergeant took stock of the apartment with vigilant eyes.
"Now this 'as to be swept out 'fore you go 'way," he said. "All fag-ends, straw and everything 'as to be cleaned out."
"Wot's the 'ell good o' cleaning this caboosh," growled Bubb. "It can't be made clean."
"It's got to be done," said Snogger, raising his eyebrows with the decision of a verdict beyond appeal. "It's horders, and if horders isn't obeyed ye'll find yourselves damned unlucky.... 'As anybody got a fag to spare?"
Somebody handed the sergeant a cigarette and he lit it. This seemed to put him in a good humour and he began relating to Bowdy Benners the story of his card-playing the night before.
"Couldn't get a card," he said. "I was dead off all the night. Once I got a top trotter, but Sergeant MacManus had a priol of deuces. I went some money on my 'and that go. But it's as I've always said: 'When a man's luck's out s'out, but when it's in s'in.'"
The sergeant paused as if waiting for the full wisdom of his remark to sink into Bowdy's brain. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, "Get ready, men, get ready! We'll soon be movin' off," and went out to the farmyard.
Much work was yet to be done, rifles had to be cleaned, odds and ends had to be collected from the straw. Here a knife and fork was found, there an entrenching tool handle, a tin of bully beef, a towel and a cake of soap. A great amount of stuff is lost in large barns; things disappear mysteriously, lost in the straw or stolen, perhaps, by the children of the billet. Soldiers treating themselves to meals at village cafés often find themselves served up with bully beef in new guise.