“All night they kept them there, standing at attention, stark naked, so that they were half-frozen when the gray, cold light of the dawn began to show behind them in the east.  And then the Germans laughed, and told their prisoners to go.

“‘Go on—­go back to your own trenches, as you are!’ they said.

“The laddies of the Black Watch could scarcely believe their ears.  There was about seventy-five yards between the two trench lines at that point, and the No Man’s Land was rough going—­all shell-pitted as it was.  By that time, too, of course, German repair parties had mended all the wire before their trenches.  So they faced a rough journey, all naked as they were.  But they started.

“They got through the wire, with the Germans laughing fit to kill themselves at the sight of the streaks of blood showing on their white skins as the wire got in its work.  They laughed at them, Dad!  And then, when they were halfway across the No Man’s Land they understood, at last, why the Germans had let them go.  For fire was opened on them with machine guns.  Everyone was mowed down—­everyone of those poor, naked, bleeding lads was killed—­murdered by that treacherous fire from behind!

“We heard all the details of that dirty bit of treachery later.  We captured some German prisoners from that very trench.  Fritz is a decent enough sort, sometimes, and there were men there whose stomachs were turned by that sight, so that they were glad to creep over, later, and surrender.  They told us, with tears in their eyes.  But we had known, before that.  We had needed no witnesses except the bodies of the boys.  It had been too dark for the men in our trenches to see what was going on—­and a burst of machine gun-fire, along the trenches, is nothing to get curious or excited about.  But those naked bodies, lying there in the No Man’s Land, had told us a good deal.

“Dad—­that was an awful sight!  I was in command of one of the burying parties we had to send out.”

That was the tale I thought of when I found that bit of the Black Watch tartan.  And I remembered, too, that it was with the Black Watch that John Poe, the famous American football player from Princeton, met his death in a charge.  He had been offered a commission, but he preferred to stay with the boys in the ranks.

CHAPTER XXI

We left our motor cars behind us in Arras, for to-day we were to go to a front-line trench, and the climax of my whole trip, so far as I could foresee, was at hand.  Johnson and the wee piano had to stay behind, too—­we could not expect to carry even so tiny an instrument as that into a front-line trench!  Once more we had to don steel helmets, but there was a great difference between these and the ones we had had at Vimy Ridge.  Mine fitted badly, and kept sliding down over my ears, or else slipping way down to the back of my head.  It must have given me a grotesque look, and it was most uncomfortable.  So I decided I would take it off and carry it for a while.