answering
roar of '. . . . _England!_'

'What an extraordinary people!' said the French staff officer, eyeing
the brigadier shaking with laughter on his prancing charger. And he
could only heave his shoulders up in an ear-embracing shrug of
non-comprehension when the laughing brigadier tried to explain to him
(as I explained to you in the beginning):

'And the best bit of the whole joke is that this particular regiment is
English to the backbone.'

THE COST

'_The cost in casualties cannot be considered heavy in view of the
success gained._'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

Outside there were blazing sunshine and heat, a haze of smoke and dust, a
nostril-stinging reek of cordite and explosive, and a never-ceasing
tumult of noises. Inside was gloom, but a closer, heavier heat, a
drug-shop smell, and all the noises of outside, little subdued, and
mingled with other lesser but closer sounds. Outside a bitterly fought
trench battle was raging; here, inside, the wreckage of battle was being
swiftly but skilfully sorted out, classified, bound up, and despatched
again into the outer world. For this was one of the field dressing
stations scattered behind the fringe of the fighting line, and through
one or other of these were passing the casualties as quickly as they
could be collected and brought back. The station had been a field
labourer's cottage, and had been roughly adapted to its present use. The
interior was in semi-darkness, because the windows were completely
blocked up with sandbags. The door, which faced towards the enemy's
lines, was also sandbagged up, and a new door had been made by knocking
out an opening through the mud-brick wall. There were two rooms
connected by a door, enlarged again by the tearing down of the
lath-and-plaster partition. The only light in the inner room filtered
through the broken and displaced tiles of the roof. On the floor, laid
out in rows so close packed that there was barely room for an orderly to
move, were queer shapeless bundles that at first glance could hardly be
recognised as men. They lay huddled on blankets or on the bare floor in
dim shadowy lines that were splashed along their length with irregularly
placed gleaming white patches. They were puzzling, these patches,
shining like snow left in the hollows of a mountain seen far off and in
the dusk. A closer look revealed them as the bandages of the first field
dressing that every man carries stitched