t worth while. My chum, Corporal Wells,
who had a quaint Cockney philosophy, used to say that he liked to
have the stomach ache because it felt so good when it stopped. On
the same theory I became nearly convinced that a month in the
trenches was good fun because it felt so good to get out.

At the end of the week I was better but still shaky. I started
pestering the M.O. to tag me for Blighty. He wouldn't, so I sprung
the same proposition on him that I had on the doctor at the
base,--to send me back to duty if he couldn't send me to England.
The brute took me at my word and sent me back to the battalion.

I rejoined on the Somme again just as they were going back for the
second time in that most awful part of the line. Many of the old
faces were gone. Some had got the wooden cross, and some had gone
to Blighty.

I sure was glad when old Wellsie hopped out and grabbed me.

"Gawd lumme, Darby," he said. "Hi sye, an' me thinkin' as 'ow you
was back in Blighty. An' 'ere ye are yer blinkin' old self. Or is
it yer bloomin' ghost. I awsks ye. Strike me pink, Yank. I'm glad."

And he was. At that I did feel more or less ghostly. I seemed to
have lost some of my confidence. I expected to "go west" on the
next time in. And that's a bad way to feel out there.

CHAPTER XIII

BACK ON THE SOMME AGAIN

When I rejoined the battalion they were just going into the Somme
again after a two weeks' rest. They didn't like it a bit.

"Gawd lumme," says Wellsie, "'ave we got to fight th' 'ole blinkin'
war. Is it right? I awsks yer. Is it?"

It was all wrong. We had been told after High Wood that we would
not have to go into action again in that part of the line but that
we would have a month of rest and after that would be sent up to
the Ypres sector. "Wipers" hadn't been any garden of roses early in
the war, but it was paradise now compared with the Somme.

It was a sad lot of men when we swung out on the road again back to
the Somme, and there was less singing than usual. That first night
we remained at Mametz Wood. We figured that we would get to kip
while the kipping was good. There were some old Boche dug-outs in
fair condition, and we were in a fair way to get comfortable. No
luck!

We were hardly down to a good sleep when C company was called to
fall in without equipment, and we knew that meant fatigue of some
sort. I have often admired the unknown who invented that word
"fatigue" as applied in a military term. H