"Your regiment is in trenches barely twenty-five yards from those of the enemy," the Colonel told him. "So up you go, and the best of luck."
"Off you go and find the man who wounded you," the third soldier was told; the fourth man confessed that he had never killed a German.
"You had better double up," said the Colonel. "It's time you killed one."
It came to Gilhooley's turn.
"How many men have you killed?" he was asked.
"In and out about fifty," was Gilhooley's answer.
"Make it a hundred then," said the Colonel; "and up you go, and the best of luck."
"By Jasus! I'll get fifty more out of it in no time," said Gilhooley, and on the following day he sauntered into the Café Pierre le Blanc in Nouex-les-Mines, drank another man's beer, and sat down on a chair at the table where four glasses filled to the brim stood sparkling in the lamplight.
Gilhooley, penniless and thirsty, had an unrivalled capacity for storing beer in his person.
"Back again, Gilhooley?" someone remarked in a diffident voice.