said one young yokel, and the
others shouted with laughter at his jest.

"Perhaps you haven't met the German sergeants," I said.

"I've met our'n," said the Sussex boy. "A man's a fool to be a soldier.
Eh, lads?"

They agreed heartily, though they were all volunteers.

"Not that we're skeered," said one of them. "We'll be glad when the
fighting begins."

"Speak for yourself, Dick Meekcombe, and don't forget the shells last
night."

There was another roar of laughter. Those boys of the South Saxons
were full of spirit. In their yokel way they were disguising their real
thoughts--their fear of being afraid, their hatred of the thought of
death--very close to them now--and their sense of strangeness in this
scene on the edge of Armentieres, a world away from their old life.

The colonel sat in a little room at headquarters, a bronzed man with
a grizzled mustache and light-blue eyes, with a fine tenderness in his
smile.

"These boys of mine are all right," he said. "They're dear fellows, and
ready for anything. Of course, it was anxious work at first, but my N.
C. O.'s are a first-class lot, and we're ready for business."

He spoke of the recruiting task which had begun the business eleven
months ago. It had not been easy, among all those scattered villages of
the southern county. He had gone hunting among the farms and cottages
for likely young fellows. They were of good class, and he had picked the
lads of intelligence, and weeded out the others. They came from a
good stock--the yeoman breed. One could not ask for better stuff. The
officers were men of old county families, and they knew their men.
That was a great thing. So far they had been very lucky with regard to
casualties, though it was unfortunate that a company commander, a fine
fellow who had been a schoolmaster and a parson, should have been picked
off by a sniper on his first day out.

The New Army had received its baptism of fire, though nothing very
fierce as yet. They were led on in easy stages to the danger-zone. It
was not fair to plunge them straight away into the bad places. But the
test of steadiness was good enough on a dark night behind the reserve
trenches, when the reliefs had gone up, and there was a bit of digging
to do in the open.

"Quiet there, boys," said the sergeant-major. "And no larks."

It was not a larky kind of place or time. There was no moon, and a light
drizzle of rain fell. The enemy's trenches were about a thousand y