Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of their food whenever that is possible.
In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of which are supplied to the trenches, and went out with the intention of getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of the way we had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the road branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one; added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp, clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave. Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of kindly grass were now covering it up.
Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had stripped to the waist as they bent over their little mess-tins of soapy water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench routine. They were deep in argument at the door of one dug-out, and almost came to blows. The row was about rations. A light-limbed youth, with sloping shoulders, had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the trenches. He said his pack was heavy enough without the bread. His mates were very angry with him.
"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"
"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"
"Would one of us not carry it?"
"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"
"Why didn't ye give it to us?"
"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless twisters!"
"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who, stripped to the waist, was washing himself.