it be known, does not
play the clean game of war, and any punishment is justifiable.

Bill had given him his deserts.

CHAPTER VIII

"HELL-FIRE POST"

"_Bullets here, bullets there,
Bullets, bullets everywhere._"

Such is trench life. Death at every corner, death at every moment of
the day. Bullets plunk against the parapet with a monotonous
regularity; others crack in the air like a whip, while some whiz past
the ear like a great queen bee. At odd intervals a dose of shrapnel
heightens the nerves, and now and again a high-explosive comes down
with a shuddering boom!

A trench isn't the place for a lady, it isn't the place for a
mild-mannered curate. It's the place for blunt, hard and active men.
In fact, the nearer man is to the brute creation the better he is at
this game. The highly strung, carefully fed, hot-house plant, such as
a mamma's darling, hasn't a look in. He finds it a beastly bore, and
longs for the drawing-room cushions and afternoon tea. Trench life
reveals the best and shows the worst. A man's nature stands out like a
statue. For trench life a man needs the stomach of a horse, the
strength of a lion, and the nerves of a navvy. Any man can do a
bayonet charge; any man can shoot down the charging host; but it takes
a braver man to live in a trench month after month. His nostrils are
filled with the stench of the fallen, for his parapet is frequently
built up with the dead. His tea is made with water polluted with
germs, the bully beef stew is generally soaked in dust and sand.

And the flies! They're worse than all, the pestilential breed! Flies
kill more men than bullets. Flies were surely invented by some ancient
Hun.

Trench life in France is a picnic compared with the Dardanelles. In
France, one _can_ get soft bread, fresh coffee and yesterday's _Times_.
But, in the Dardanelles it is biscuits and bully, bully and
biscuits--without the news of Pollokshields and Mayfair. Yet, despite
the severity of things, the Australasians were ever serene. To them it
was a sporting game. They had been used to boiling their own billy
cans; used to looking for firewood; used to making a shanty wherein to
lay their heads. Where the Cockney might die from heat and thirst, the
Australasian can thrive like a Zulu or aborigine. City bred troops
demand an organisation of things; Australasian troops organise things
for themselves. And where our friends of The Kangaroo Marines were