Tommy Atkins to right of us; Tommy Atkins to left of us, cobblestones beneath us, we staggered and swayed.  The English boys cheered and yelled a greeting.  It was rousing, it was thrilling, it was a welcome that did our hearts good; but we could not rise to the occasion.

Suddenly from out of the crowd of khaki figures there came a voice—­that of a true son of the East End—­a suburb of Whitechapel was surely his cappy home.

“S’y, ‘ere comes the Singin’ Can-ydians ...  ’Ere they come ...  ’Ear their singin’.”

Not a sound from our ranks.  Silence.  But it was too much.  No one can offer a gibe to a man of the West without his getting it back.  Far from down our column some one yelled: 

“Are we downhearted?” “No!” We peeled back the answer raucously enough, and then on with the song: 

Are we downhearted?  No, no, no. 
Are we downhearted?  No, no, no. 
Troubles may come and troubles may go,
But we keep smiling where’er we go,
Are we downhearted?  Are we downhearted? 

                        No, no, NO!

“No, Gor’blimey, y’er not down’earted, but yer look bally well broken-’earted,” chanted our small Cockney comrade, with sarcasm ringing strong in every clipped tone of his voice.

CHAPTER V

UNDER FIRE

Broken-hearted!  Gee!  We sure were—­nearly; but not quite.  No.  This was bad; there was worse to come, and still we kept our hearts whole.

But there was another trial now, and we were directed to rest billets in what presumably had been a two-story schoolhouse or seminary.  As soon as we reached this shelter we flopped down on the hard bare floor and lay just as we were, not even loosening our harness.

We were less than three miles from the front lines.  Even at this short distance Armentieres, as a whole, had not suffered greatly from shell fire, though the upper floors of this old seminary had been shattered almost to ruins long before our arrival.

The city itself was a good strategic point for the artillery.  Behind houses, stores, churches, anywhere that offered concealment, our guns were hidden.  Our artillery officers used every available inch of cover, for they had to screen our guns from the observation of enemy aircraft which flew with irritating irregularity over the town, and they had to avoid the none too praiseworthy attention of spies, in which Armentieres was rich.

Armentieres in those days was practically a network of our gun emplacements.  The majority were howitzers.  These fire high; they have a possible angle of forty-five degrees.  There was no danger of their damaging our own immediate positions.

The ordinary infantry man knows less than nothing about artillery.  If ever a bunch of greenhorns landed in France, frankly, we of the First Contingent were that same bunch.