"Ask me another," replied Sergeant Fortescue. "All I know is that the division moves up to the front on the 3rd of next month, so it looks as if we're going to shake Fritz by the scruff of his neck."
"Hallo, there's Mike Dowit!" exclaimed Malcolm, as the stretcher-bearer passed by. "How goes it, chum?"
Stretcher-bearer Dowit stopped, crossed the road, and grasped the rifleman's hand. Being a man of very few words, he excelled himself by saying nothing.
"Ask him," prompted Fortescue, "when he's going to have another bath at the Estaminet Moulin Gris."
The stretcher-bearer flushed and shuffled his feet awkwardly.
"Mike's as shy as a wahine," continued the Sergeant. "I'll tell you the yarn. We were billeted at an estaminet that had copped it pretty thick. Roof practically off, and the outbuildings nothing but a pile of bricks; you know the sort of thing. Well, Mike discovered a tub full of water, as he thought, and early one morning he slipped out to have a bath. He had only just started his ablutions when Madame's face appeared at the only window left in the inn. 'Arrêtez!' she shouted; 'arrêtez! You no use soap. Soap na poo. You spoil ze beer--compree?'"
"I've only got her word that it was beer," declared Dowit stolidly.
"It's a great joke with the boys," continued Fortescue, after the stretcher-bearer had gone. "They chip him frightfully about it; ask if that's why he's got the D.C. M. I suppose you didn't know that it was awarded him, for gallantry at Messines--rescuing wounded under heavy fire? My word! Mike was hot stuff that day. It was a thundering good job when he slung that dud bomb at Featherstone Camp, or I mightn't be here now."
In the dead of night of the 3rd of October the New Zealand Division, in heavy marching order, silently relieved a Tommy division on the Flanders Front.
"Where are we, Sergeant?" enquired Rifleman M'Kane. "This spot doesn't seem familiar."