new camp lay at the foot of a gloomy hill. A disused trench ran
right across it. Rifles, bayonets, bandoliers, grenades, water-bottles,
packs, articles of clothing and bits of equipment lay scattered
everywhere. Barbed wire rusted in coils or straggling lengths. Rusty
tins and twisted, rusty sheets of shrapnel-riddled corrugated iron
littered the sodden mud. Water, rust-stained or black and fetid,
stagnated in pools and shell-holes. The sides of the trench were moist
with iridescent slime. Dead soldiers lay everywhere with grey faces,
grey hands and mouldering uniforms. Their pockets were turned inside out
and mud-stained letters and postcards, and sometimes a mildewed
pocket-book or a broken mirror, were dispersed round every rotting
corpse. In front of my tent the white ribs of a horse projected from a
heap of loose earth. Near by a boot with a human foot inside emerged
from the black scummy water at the bottom of a shell-hole. An evil
stench hovered in the air.

We buried all the dead that lay within the camp-lines. Then darkness
descended and we crept into our tents.

We were lying on wet, oozy clay, thinly covered with wisps of soaked
grass and decaying straw--there had been a cornfield here a year ago.

There were thirteen of us in one tent. We were wedged in tightly,
shoulder to shoulder, our feet all in one bunch.

Candles were lit and some of the men sat up and searched their clothes.
I was conscious of a slight irritation, but was so tired and depressed
that I resolved to ignore it and postpone my usual search to the
following day.

But as I lay still, trying hard to fall asleep, the irritation
increased. At last it became so maddening that I started up in bitter
rage. I lit my candle and pulled off my shirt.

"Chatty [lousy] are yer?" said someone in an amused tone.

"I've got a big one crawling about somewhere," I answered. None of us
ever admitted that we had more than one or two, even when we knew we
had a great many. It was also considered less disreputable to have one
"big one" than two small ones.

"It's the Gink's fault--'e swarms with 'em. I was standin' be'ind 'im in
the ranks the other day an' I saw three of 'em crorlin' out of 'is
collar up 'is neck. 'E never washes and never changes 'is clothes, so
what can yer expect?"

The "Gink" flared up at once:

"Yer god-damn son of a bitch--it's youss guys that never washes. I bet
yer me borram dollar I ant got a god-damn chat on me...."

A l