"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the two men lay.
They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity. Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in something else, a problem which he failed to solve.
One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless body in the trench.
"Brothers," he said.
For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs. Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.
The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church, but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.
"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.
"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even when I read it in the papers at home, but now—"
"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer, "and they always keep potting at the place."
"But have we?"