We had been working all morning in a cornfield near an estaminet on the La Bassée Road. The morning was very hot, and Pryor and I felt very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by drinking white wine in an estaminet by the La Bassée Road.
"This is not the place to dig trenches," said the sergeant when we entered.
"We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse," Pryor explained. "It is to be made on a new principle, and a rifleman on sentry-go can sleep there and get wind of the approach of a sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the trench."
"Every man in the battalion must not be in here," said the sergeant looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses. "I can't allow it and the back room empty."
Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear, where we found two persons, a woman and a man. The woman was sweating over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long rapier-like instrument which he handled with marvellous dexterity.
"Digging trenches?" he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket.
I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, who was educated in Paris, speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work since five o'clock that morning.
"The Germans will never get back here again unless as prisoners."
"They might thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.
"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten, our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench. Plusieurs morts, plusieurs blessés. Run! Some go right, some left. The second shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as the 75."