When the thaw set in, I put a couple of bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that I could stand in a dry place.  We had two picks and two shovels in that cellar in case anything happened overnight.  I have been up against it.  Whenever I talked to the boys there they sat with their gas-bags round their necks, and one held mine while I talked.  It was quite a common thing to have something fall quite close to us while we were singing.

Imagine singing “Cover my defenceless head,” just as a piece of the roof is falling in.  Or—­

" In death’s dark vale I fear no ill With Thee, dear Lord, beside me—­ "

then another crash!  That makes things real.  Every word was accompanied by the roar of guns—­the rattle of the machine gun and the crack of the rifle.  We never knew what it was to be quiet.

A shell once came and burst just the other side of the wall against which I was standing and blew part of it over my head.  I have suffered as your boys have, and I have preached the Gospel to your boys in the front line.  I long for the privilege of doing it again.

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If I had my way I’d take all the best preachers in Britain and I’d put them down in France.  And if the church and chapel goers grumbled, I’d say, “You’re overfed.  You can do without a preacher for a little.”  And if they were to ask, “How do you know?” I should reply, “Because it’s hard work to get you to one meal a week.  You only come once on a Sunday and often not that.  That’s how I know you are not enjoying your food.”

I love talking to the Scottish boys—­the kilties.  Oh! they are great boys—­ the kilties.  When the French first saw them they didn’t know what they were, whether they were men or women.

“Don’t you know what they are?” said a bright-faced English boy.  “They are what we call the Middlesex.”

You can’t beat a British boy, he’s on the spot all the time—­“the Middlesex!” Some of you haven’t seen the joke yet.

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I once went to a hut just behind the line, within the sound of the guns.  Buildings all round us had been blown to pieces.  The leader of this hut was a clergyman of the Church of England, but he wasn’t an ecclesiastic there, he was a man amongst men, and we loved him.

“Gipsy Smith,” he said, “I don’t know what you will do; the boys in the billets this week are the Munsters—­Irish Roman Catholics.  You would have got on all right last week; we had the York and Lancasters.”

“Do you think they will come to the meetings?”

“I don’t know,” he replied; “they come for everything else!  They come for their smokes, candles, soap, buttons—­bachelor’s buttons—­postcards, and everything else they want.  But whether they will come for the religious part, I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said, “we can but try.”

It was about midday when we were talking, and the meeting was to be at 6.30.