There was a turn in the road just beyond us that hid its continuation from us.  And around the bend now there came a company of soldiers.  Not neat and well-appointed soldiers these.  Ah, no!  They were fresh from the trenches, on their way back to rest.  The mud and grime of the trenches were upon them.  They were tired and weary, and they carried all their accoutrements and packs with them.  Their boots were heavy with mud.  And they looked bad, and many of them shaky.  Most of these men, Godfrey told me after a glance at them, had been ordered back to hospital for minor ailments.  They were able to march, but not much more.

They were the first men I had seen in such a case, They looked bad enough, but Godfrey said they were happy enough.  Some of them would get leave for Blighty, and be home, in a few days, to see their families and their girls.  And they came swinging along in fine style, sick and tired as they were, for the thought of where they were going cheered them and helped to keep them going.

A British soldier, equipped for the trenches, on his way in or out, has quite a load to carry.  He has his pack, and his emergency ration, and his entrenching tools, and extra clothing that he needs in bad weather in the trenches, to say nothing of his ever-present rifle.  And the sight of them made me realize for the first time the truth that lay behind the jest in a story that is one of Tommy’s favorites.

A child saw a soldier in heavy marching order.  She gazed at him in wide-eyed wonder.  He was not her idea of what a soldier should look like.

“Mother,” she asked, “what is a soldier for?”

The mother gazed at the man.  And then she smiled.

“A soldier,” she answered, “is to hang things on.”

They eyed me very curiously as they came along, those sick laddies.  They couldn’t seem to understand what I was doing there, but their discipline held them.  They were in charge of a young lieutenant with one star—­a second lieutenant.  I learned later that he was a long way from being a well man himself.  So I stopped him.  “Would your men like to hear a few songs, lieutenant?” I asked him.

He hesitated.  He didn’t quite understand, and he wasn’t a bit sure what his duty was in the circumstances.  He glanced at Godfrey, and Godfrey smiled at him as if in encouragement.

“It’s very good of you, I’m sure,” he said, slowly.  “Fall out!”

So the men fell out, and squatted there, along the wayside.  At once discipline was relaxed.  Their faces were a study as the wee piano was set up again, and Johnson, in uniform, of course sat down and trued a chord or two.  And then suddenly something happened that broke the ice.  Just as I stood up to sing a loud voice broke the silence.

“Lor’ love us!” one of the men cried, “if it ain’t old ’Arry Lauder!”

There was a stir of interest at once.  I spotted the owner of the voice.  It was a shriveled up little chap, with a weazened face that looked like a sun-dried apple.  He was showing all his teeth in a grin at me, and he was a typical little cockney of the sort all Londoners know well.