"No casualties?"

"Yin or twa stuck their heads o'er the parapet when they shouldn't and they copped it," said Glasgow, "but barrin' that 'twas quiet."

In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.

"Irish?" I asked.

"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"

"I am," I answered.

"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody said. "Are ye dry?"

I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. "Is there something to drink?" I queried.

"There's a drop of cold tay, me boy," the man near me replied. "Where's yer mess-tin, Mike?"

A tin was handed to me, and I drank greedily of the cold black tea. The man Mike gave some useful hints on trench work.