At last the order to stand to arms is given again, and the new day comes creeping sadly over the plain of Flanders. What looked like a great hand stretched up appealingly to heaven becomes a shattered, broken tree; the uniform veil of grey gives place to grass and empty tins, dead bodies lying huddled up grotesquely, and winding lines of German trenches. The sky goes faintly blue, and the sun peeps out, gleaming on the drops of rain that still hang from our barbed wire, and on the long row of bayonets along the trench.
The new day is here, but what will it bring? The monotony may be broken by an attack, the battalion may be relieved. Who knows? Who cares? Enough that daylight is here and the sun is shining, that periscopes and sleep are once more permitted, that breakfast is at hand, and that some day we shall get back to billets.
XXV
JOHN WILLIAMS, TRAMP AND SOLDIER
On a wet and cheerless evening in September 1914, John Williams, tramp, sat in the bar of the Golden Lion and gazed regretfully at the tankard before him, which must of necessity remain empty, seeing that he had just spent his last penny. To him came a recruiting sergeant.
"Would you like a drink, mate?" he asked.
John Williams did not hesitate.
"You ought to be in the Army," said the sergeant, as he put down his empty tankard, "a fine great body of a man like you. It's the best life there is."
"I bean't so sartain as I want to be a sojer. I be a hindependent man."