slowly, almost awkwardly; but they dropped with lightning
speed, and alas, for any poor Tommy who misjudged the place of its fall!
However, every one had a chance. Trench-mortar projectiles are so large
that one can see them coming, and they describe so leisurely an arc
before they fall that men have time to run.

I have always admired Tommy Atkins for his sense of fair play. He enjoyed
giving Fritz "a little bit of all-right," but he never resented it when
Fritz had his own fun at our expense. In the far-off days of peace, I
used to lament the fact that we had fallen upon evil times. I read of old
wars with a feeling of regret that men had lost their old primal love for
dangerous sport, their naive ignorance of fear. All the brave, heroic
things of life were said and done. But on those trench-mortaring days,
when I watched boys playing with death with right good zest, heard them
shouting and laughing as they tumbled over one another in their eagerness
to escape it, I was convinced of my error. Daily I saw men going through
the test of fire triumphantly, and, at the last, what a severe test it
was! And how splendidly they met it! During six months continuously in
the firing-line, I met less than a dozen natural-born cowards; and my
experience was largely with plumbers, drapers' assistants, clerks, men
who had no fighting traditions to back them up, make them heroic in spite
of themselves.

The better I knew Tommy, the better I liked him. He hasn't a shred of
sentimentality in his make-up. There is plenty of sentiment, sincere
feeling, but it is admirably concealed. I had been a soldier of the King
for many months before I realized that the men with whom I was living,
sharing rations and hardships, were anything other than the healthy
animals they looked. They relished their food and talked about it. They
grumbled at the restraints military discipline imposed upon them, and at
the paltry shilling a day which they received for the first really hard
work they had ever done. They appeared to regard England as a miserly
employer, exacting their last ounce of energy for a wretchedly inadequate
wage. To the casual observer, theirs was not the ardor of loyal sons,
fighting for a beloved motherland. Rather, it seemed that of
irresponsible schoolboys on a long holiday. They said nothing about
patriotism or the duty of Englishmen in war-time. And if I attempted to
start a conversation along that line, they walked right over me wi