r
send a thousand of the swine down to the fatherland than lose one of my
boys. And perhaps it was charity to some wife and daughter who would
now be free from the brutality of her Teutonic lord and master.

There is nothing so easy as to be lost in No Man's Land. A compass is
useless, for you may be lying on a fifteen-inch shell just covered with
a few inches of earth, and the stars refuse to look down on its pain,
and the sky is always thickly veiled. Turn round three times, and you
don't know which trench to return to. It is an awkward predicament,
and many a time I went blindly forward praying that it was in the right
direction. The German's horn-rimmed glasses but bewilder him the more,
and we have had several of them walk into our arms without intention,
though they soon found that thereby they had bettered themselves.
There was one young Bavarian officer who made this miscalculation. I
saw him moving near our wire in the early dawn. I called to some men
to draw a bead on him but he came toward us and at the last with a run
jumped down into our trench. "Good morning!" I said to him, looking
down my automatic, and you never saw such a crestfallen countenance in
your life. It must have been some shock, expecting to join his own
people and suddenly finding himself in the camp of his enemies. I
found out afterward that he was a young cadet qualifying for his
commission, and this was his first night in the trenches. He evidently
was seeking an iron cross very early in his career. I spat question
after question at him: "What's your regiment?" "How long have you been
in the trenches?" etc., but in English he replied: "I won't tell you
anything. You can't make me!" "All right, old chap, don't get
excited! Come along with me." I took him to the dugout which I shared
with the medical officer in the support-trenches and sent Pat, my
batman, to get together the best meal he could. Pat was a genius as a
provider. None of the other officers liked him, for they suspected he
was the medium for the loss of some of their luxuries, and I always had
a blind eye. On this occasion Pat got together a real slap-up
feed--some tinned sausages, mashed potatoes, strawberry jam, preserved
pears and cream, not forgetting a bottle of champagne. I sent for the
doctor and we fell to with gusto, and never offered his nibs a bite,
though the eyes were popping out of his head, and his mouth watering
with hunger. Toward the end o