"Four hours from the time when he handed me the blue paper in front of my hoose in Glasgow I was at Hamilton Barracks. In twelve hours I was in Southhampton. In twenty hours I was in France. And aboot as soon as I got there I was in a lot of shooting and running this way and that that they ha' told me since was the Battle of the Marne.
"And in twenty-four hours more I was on my way back to Glasgow! In forty-eight hours I woke up in Stobe Hill Infirmary and the nurse was saying in my ear: 'Ye're all richt the noon, Tamson. We ha' only just amputated your leg!'
"So I think I ha' been to the war, but I can only say I think so. I only know what I was told—that ha' never seen a damn German yet!"
That is a true story of Tamson the baker. And his experience has actually been shared by many a poor fellow—and by many another who might have counted himself lucky if he had lost no more than a leg, as Tamson did.
But the laddies of my battery, though they were shooting now at Germans they could not see, had had many a close up view of Fritz in the past, and expected many another in the future. Maybe they will get one, some time, after the fashion of the company of which my boy John once told me.
The captain of this company—a Hieland company, it was, though not of John's regiment—had spent must of his time in London before the war, and belonged to several clubs, which, in those days, employed many Germans as servants and waiters. He was a big man, and he had a deep, bass voice, so that he roared like the bull of Bashan when he had a mind to raise it for all to hear.
One day things were dull in his sector. The front line trench was not far from that of the Germans, but there was no activity beyond that of the snipers, and the Germans were being so cautious that ours were getting mighty few shots. The captain was bored, and so were the men.
"How would you like a pot shot, lads?" he asked.
"Fine!" came the answer. "Fine, sir!"
"Very well," said the captain. "Get ready with your rifles, and keep your eyes on you trench."