“Do you think that we shall starve the Germans out?”

“No.  We must win by fighting,” he replied.  This was in March, 1915.  “You know,” he went on, taking another tack, “when one gets back to England out of this muck he wants good linen and everything very nice.”

“Yes.  I’ve found the same after roughing it,” I agreed.  “One is most particular that he has every comfort to which civilization entitles him.”

We chatted on.  Much of our talk was soldier shop talk, which you will not care to hear.  Twice we were interrupted by an outburst of firing, and the captain hurried out to ascertain the reason.  Some false alarm had started the rifles speaking from both sides.  A fusillade for two or three minutes and the firing died down to silence.

Dawn broke and it was time for me to go; and with daylight, when danger of a night surprise was over, the captain would have his sleep.  I was leaving him to his mud house and his bed on the wet ground without a blanket.  It was more important to have sandbags up for the breastworks than to have blankets; and as the men had not yet received theirs, he had none himself.

“It’s not fair to the men,” he said.  “I don’t want anything they don’t have.”

No better food and no better house and no warmer garments!  He spoke not in any sense of stated duty, but in the affection of the comradeship of war; the affection born of that imperturbable courage of his soldiers who had stood a stone wall of cool resolution against German charges when it seemed as if they must go.  The glamour of war may have departed, but not the brotherhood of hardship and dangers shared.

What had been a routine night to him had been a great night to me; one of the most memorable of my life.

“I was glad you could come,” he said, as I made my adieu, quite as if he were saying adieu to a guest at home in England.

Some of the soldiers called their cheery good-byes; and with a lieutenant to guide me, I set out while the light was still dusky, leaving the comforting parapet to the rear to go into the open, four hundred yards from the Germans.  A German, though he could not have seen us distinctly, must have noted something moving.  Two of his bullets came rather close before we passed out of his vision among some trees.

In a few minutes I was again entering the peasant’s cottage that was battalion headquarters; this time by daylight.  Its walls were chipped by bullets that had come over the breastworks.  The major was just getting up from his blankets in the cellar.  By this time I had a real trench appetite.  Not until after breakfast did it occur to me, with some surprise, that I had not washed my face.

“The food was just as good, wasn’t it?” remarked the major.  “We get quite used to such breaches of convention.  Besides, you had been up all night, so your breakfast might be called your after-the-theatre supper.”