CHAPTER XXII

I was sorry to be leaving the Highland laddies in that trench.  Aye!  But for the trench itself I had nae regrets—­nae, none whatever!  I know no spot on the surface of this earth, of all that I have visited, and I have been in many climes, that struck me as less salubrious than you bit o’ trench.  There were too many other visitors there that day, along with the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour.  They were braw laddies, yo, but no what you might call over-particular about the company they kept!  I’d thank them, if they’d be havin’ me to veesit them again, to let me come by my ain!

Getting away was not the safest business in the world, either, although it was better than staying in yon trench.  We had to make our way back to the railway embankment, and along it for a space, and the embankment was being heavily shelled.  It was really a trench line itself, full of dugouts, and as we made our way along heads popped in all directions, topped by steel helmets.  I was eager to be on the other side of you embankment, although I knew well enough that there was no sanctuary on either side of it, nor for a long space behind it.

That was what they called the Frenchy railway cutting, and it overlooked the ruined village of Athies.  And not until after I had crossed it was I breathing properly.  I began, then, to feel more like myself, and my heart and all my functions began to be more normal.

All this region we had to cross now was still under fire, but the fire was nothing to what it had been.  The evidences of the terrific bombardments there had been were plainly to be seen.  Every scrap of exposed ground had been nicked by shells; the holes were as close together as those in a honeycomb.  I could not see how any living thing had come through that hell of fire, but many men had.  Now the embankment fairly buzzed with activity.  The dugouts were everywhere, and the way the helmeted heads popped out as we passed, inquiringly, made me think of the prairie dog towns I had seen in Canada and the western United States.

The river Scarpe flowed close by.  It was a narrow, sluggish stream, and it did not look to me worthy of its famous name.  But often, that spring, its slow-moving waters had been flecked by a bloody froth, and the bodies of brave men had been hidden by them, and washed clean of the trench mud.  Now, uninviting as its aspect was, and sinister as were the memories it must have evoked in other hearts beside my own, it was water.  And on so hot a day water was a precious thing to men who had been working as the laddies hereabout had worked and labored.

So either bank was dotted with naked bodies, and the stream itself showed head after head, and flashing white arms as men went swimming.  Some were scrubbing themselves, taking a Briton’s keen delight in a bath, no matter what the circumstances in which he gets it; others were washing their clothes, slapping and pounding the soaked garments in a way to have wrung the hearts of their wives, had they seen them at it.  The British soldier, in the field, does many things for himself that folks at hame never think of!  But many of the men were just lying on the bank, sprawled out and sunning themselves like alligators, basking in the warm sunshine and soaking up rest and good cheer.