A patient came out of the theatre with bandaged arm.  He held a large, semi-circular piece of iron in his hand.

“Is that what they took out o’ yer arm?” said one of the infantrymen.

“Yes—­decent bit, isn’t it!”

“Gorblimy, I wish I could ’ave a bit like that, in me knee or somewhere, to lay me up for months.”

His comrade added in a voice full of hopeless longing: 

“I wish I were in his shoes.  Anything to keep out of that hell up the line!”

“’E’s a sure Blighty, ain’t ’e?”

“Sure!”

The man with the injured arm put on his boots and threw his tunic over his shoulders and walked off, smiling happily.

A German, looking weak and pale, came in.  He was in great agony and had received permission to enter the theatre with the British wounded, so that his pain might be relieved as soon as possible.

“’Ullo, Fritzie,” said someone in a cheerful voice.  “Got a Blighty?”

The German did not understand and looked utterly miserable.  He sat down timidly with the others.  The room was dark except for the glow given out by the stove that lit up the hands and faces of those around it.  Suddenly a man shouted from the background: 

“Them bastard Fritzes—­I’d poison the ’ole lot.”  And that started the argument.

“I reckon one man’s as good as another.”

“I reckon a Tommy’s worth a dozen Fritzes.  The bleeders ought ter be wiped orf the face o’ the bleed’n’ earth.  I see ’em do a thing or two, I tell yer—­me an’ my mate was in the line down Plugstreet way when they crucified a Canadian.  I see the tree what they did it on wi’ me own eyes—­dirty lot o’ swine!”

“Bloody lies!  Yer read it in the paper!”

“Wha’ if I did?”

“Yer said yer saw it yerself!”

“Well, I read it in the papers and then I see the tree what they did it on arterwards.  The nails was still there.  An’ what d’you know about it?  Yer in the artillery, yer don’t see no fightin’!”

“Don’t see no fightin’!  Gorblimy, I reckon the infantry wouldn’t be much bleedin’ cop wi’out the artillery.”

“I’ll tell yer what the artillery do—­blow up their own mates what’s in the front line, there now!”

“If we’d ’ad artillery in August, 1914, the war’d ‘a’ bin over in three weeks!”

“Don’t yer believe it!  It’s the infantry what ‘as all the danger an’ gits all the rotten jobs.  The artillery’s cushey compared wi’ the infantry.”

“The artillery ’as a bloody sight ’eavier losses!”

“Go on—­tell us another!  It’s no good arguin’ wi’ yer, yer won’t see any side ’cept yer own.”

But a third man, bringing the argument back to its original subject, said: 

“I reckon it’s all bloody lies what’s in the papers.  The Belgies is a damn sight worse’n Jerry. [The Germans.] Yer know that there gun what used to shell Poperinge—­well, they never knew where the shells came from till they found it was a Belgian batt’ry ’id in a tunnel.  They caught the gunners when they was telephonin’ to Jerry.  They stood the ‘ole bleed’n’ lot up aginst a wall an’ shot ’em—­serve ’em right too.”