"Where are we going to bathe?" I asked the platoon sergeant.
"In the village at the rear," he answered.
"There's nobody there, nothing but battered houses," I answered. "And the place gets shelled daily."
"That doesn't matter," said the platoon sergeant. "There's going to be a bath and a jolly good one for all. Hot water."
We went out to the village at the rear, the Village of Shattered Homes, which were bunched together under the wall of a rather pretentious villa that had so far suffered very little from the effects of the German artillery. As yet the roof and windows were all that were damaged, the roof was blown in and the window glass was smashed to pieces.
We got a good bath, a cold spray whizzed from the nozzle of a serpentine hose, and a share of underclothing. The last we needed badly for the chalk trenches were very verminous. We went back clean and wholesome, the bath put new life into us.
That same evening, what time the star-shells began to flare and the flashes of the guns could be seen on the hills of Lorette, two of our men got done to death in their dug-out. A shell hit the roof and smashed the pit-props down on top of the two soldiers. Death was instantaneous in both cases.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Covering Party
Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind,
With the trenches threat of death before, the peaceful homes behind;
And luck is with you or luck is not, as the ticket of fate is drawn,
The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn?