t was next door to one
blown to pieces by a shell yesterday, and keep on working in fields
where hardly a day passed without a shell screaming overhead, whether
they'd still go about their work as best they could for six days a week
and then to church on Sunday.

Two women, one young and lissom, the other bent and frail and clinging
with her old arm to the erect figure beside her, stand aside close to
the ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 'Cheer up, mother,' one man
calls. 'We're goin' to shift the Boshies out for you,' and 'Bong
jewer,' says another, waving his hand. Another pulls a sprig of lilac
from his cap and thrusts it out as he passes. 'Souvenir!' he says,
lightly, and the young woman catches the blossom and draws herself up
with her eyes sparkling and calls, 'Bonne chance, Messieurs. Goo-o-o-d
lock.' She repeats the words over and over while the regiment passes,
and the men answer, 'Bong chawnse' and 'Good luck,' and such scraps of
French as they know--or think they know. The women stand in the
sunshine and watch them long after they have passed, and then turn
slowly and move on to their church and their prayers.

The regiment tramps on. It moves with the assured stamp and swing of
men who know themselves and know their game, and have confidence in
their strength and fitness. Their clothes are faded and
weather-stained, their belts and straps and equipments chafed and worn,
the woodwork of their rifles smooth of butt and shiny of hand-grip from
much using and cleaning. Their faces bronzed and weather-beaten, and
with a dew of perspiration just damping their foreheads--where men less
fit would be streaming sweat--are full-cheeked and glowing with health,
and cheek and chin razored clean and smooth as a guardsman's going on
church parade. The whole regiment looks fresh and well set-up and
clean-cut, satisfied with the day and not bothering about the morrow,
magnificently strong and healthy, carelessly content and happy, not
anxious to go out of its way to find a fight, but impossible to move
aside from its way by the fight that does find it--all of which is to
say it looks exactly what it is, a British regiment of the regular
Line, war-hardened by eight or nine months' fighting, moving up from a
four days' rest back into the firing line.

It is fairly early in the day, and the sun, although it is bright
enough to bring out the full colour of the green grass and trees, the
yellow laburnum, and t