“Once again, they were regulars.”
“Once again, so are you.
“‘For gold the sailor ploughs the main,
The farmer ploughs the manor,
The brave poor soldier ne’er disdain,
That keeps his country’s honour!’
That’s you to the life, Dormer. Twenty years hence you’ll be a bronzed veteran, in a dirty uniform, with a quarter of a century’s polish on your Sam Browne. You have already had more iron whizz past your head than any regular soldier gets in a lifetime, or even the lifetime of two or three generations. You’ve had a practical experience of war that any general might envy. The only complaint I have to make against you is that you’re conducting the whole business as if you were back in your beastly bank, instead of, as the song says, behaving as one ‘That keeps his country’s honour!’”
“That’s all nonsense. I’ve just sent the 561 Brigade to occupy the new line that was taken up after the stunt last Thursday. You know what it’s like. It’s the remains of a German trench turned round, so that they have all the observation. They’ve strafed it to Hell, and we are firing on photographs of trenches that are probably empty. It’s all nonsense to say the defending side loses more men than the attacking. That’s true while the attack is in progress, but an attack in its very nature cannot last long, and then the defenders get their own back.”
As he said the words they were enveloped in an explosion that shook the wet out of the canvas upon them, and whose aftermath of falling débris was echoed by stampeded traffic in the road.
“The Bosche seem set on proving you right,” laughed Kavanagh. “They forget, as you do, that, sooner or later, an attack gets through and ends the War.”