by Captain Bairnsfather that made
me laugh a good deal, because it represented so exactly the way I
felt. He had made a drawing of two Tommies in a wee bit of a hole in
a field that was being swept by shells and missiles of every sort.
One was grousing to his mate, and the other said to him:

"If you know a better 'ole go 'ide in it!"

I said we all turned and ran for cover. But there was one braw laddie
who did nothing of the sort. He would not run--such tricks were not
for him!

He was a big Hie'land laddie, and he wore naught but his kilt and his
semmet--his undershirt. He had on his steel helmet, and it shaded a
face that had not been shaved or washed for days. His great, brawny
arms were folded across his chest, and he was smoking his pipe. And
he stood there as quiet and unconcerned as if he had been a village
smith gazing down a quiet country road. I watched him, and he saw me,
and grinned at me. And now and then he glanced at me, quizzically.

"It's all right, Harry," he said, several times. "Dinna fash
yoursel', man. I'll tell ye in time for ye to duck if I see one
coming your way!"

We crouched in our holes until there came a brief lull in the
bombardment. Probably the Germans thought they had killed us all and
cleared the trench, or maybe it had been only that they hadn't liked
my singing, and had been satisfied when they had stopped it. So we
came out, but the firing was not over at all, as we found out at
once. So we went down a bit deeper, into concrete dugouts.

This trench had been a part of the intricate German defensive system
far back of their old front line, and they had had the pains of
building and hollowing out the fine dugout into which I now went for
shelter. Here they had lived, deep under the earth, like animals--and
with animals, too. For when I reached the bottom a dog came to meet
me, sticking out his red tongue to lick my hand, and wagging his tail
as friendly as you please.

He was a German dog--one of the prisoners of war taken in the great
attack. His old masters hadn't bothered to call him and take him with
them when the Highlanders came along, and so he had stayed behind as
part of the spoils of the attack.

That wasn't much of a dog, as dogs go. He was a mongrel-looking
creature, but he couldn't have been friendlier. The Highlanders had
adopted him and called him Fritz, and they were very fond of him, and
he of them. He had no thought of war. He behaved just as dogs do at h