wn up to that. But when
my pals are in danger, I'm not a dodger any more. I forget discipline
and everything else. I see men, and I go. But otherwise, my boy, I look
after my little self."

Lamuse's claims are not idle words. He is an admitted expert at
loafing, but all the same he has brought wounded in under fire and
saved their lives. Without any brag, he relates the deed--

"We were all lying on the grass, and having a hot time. Crack, crack!
Whizz, whizz! When I saw them downed, I got up, though they yelled at
me, 'Get down!' Couldn't leave 'em like that. Nothing to make a song
about, seeing I couldn't do anything else."

Nearly all the boys of the squad have some high deed of arms to their
credit, and the Croix de Guerre has been successively set upon their
breasts.

"I haven't saved any Frenchmen," says Biquet, "but I've given some
Boches the bitter pill." In the May attacks, he ran off in advance and
was seen to disappear in the distance, but came back with four fine
fellows in helmets.

"I, too," says Tulacque, "I've killed some." Two months ago, with
quaint vanity, he laid out nine in a straight row, in front of the
taken trench. "But," he adds, "it's always the Boche officer that I'm
after."

"Ah, the beasts!" The curse comes from several men at once and from the
bottom of their hearts.

"Ah, mon vieux," says Tirloir, "we talk about the dirty Boche race; but
as for the common soldier, I don't know if it's true or whether we're
codded about that as well, and if at bottom they're not men pretty much
like us."

"Probably they're men like us," says Eudore.

"Perhaps!" cries Cocon, "and perhaps not."

"Anyway," Tirloir goes on, "we've not got a dead set on the men, but on
the German officers; non, non, non, they're not men, they're monsters.
I tell you, they're really a specially filthy sort o' vermin. One might
say that they're the microbes of the war. You ought to see them close
to--the infernal great stiff-backs, thin as nails, though they've got
calf-heads."

"And snouts like snakes."

Tirloir continues: "I saw one once, a prisoner, as I came back from
liaison. The beastly bastard! A Prussian colonel, that wore a prince's
crown, so they told me, and a gold coat-of-arms. He was mad because we
took leave to graze against him when they were bringing him back along
the communication trench, and he looked down on everybody--like that. I
said to myself, 'Wait a bit, old cock, I'll make you rattle di