“And you got home with the Uhlans?” I asked.

“Once.  Their lances ain’t much good except for lightin’ street-lamps.”

“Street-lamps?” said the chaplain literally.

“Yuss.  They’re too long.  The blighters ’ave no grip on them.  We just parry and then thrust with the point; we’ve giv’ up cutting exercises.  If the thrust misses, you uses the pommel—­so!” He executed an intimidating gesture with his stick.

“Well, ah’ve had ma bit o’ fun,” interjected a small H.L.I. man irrelevantly, feeling, apparently, it was his turn in the symposium, as he thrust a red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones into the group.  “Ah ken verra weel ah got ’im.  It was at a railway stashon where we surprised ’em.  Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer—­I thocht he were drunk—­and he fired three times aht me with a ree-vol-ver.  But ah got ‘im.  Yes, ah’ve had ma bit o’ fun,” he said complacently as he cherished an arm in a sling.

With him was a comrade belonging to the “Lilywhites,” the old 82nd, now known as the first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the H.L.I. have an ancient friendship.  The South Lancs have also their antipathies—­the King’s Liverpools among them—­but that is neither here nor there.

“It were just like a coop-tie crowd was the retreat,” he drawled in the broad Lancashire dialect.  “A fair mix-up, it were.”

“What do you think of the Germans?”

There was a chorus of voices.  “Not much”—­“Blighters”—­“Swine.”

“Their ‘coal-boxes’ don’t come off half the time,” said the R.F.A. man professionally.  “And their shrapnel hasn’t got the dispersion ours has.  Ours is a treat—­like sugar-loaf.”  The German gunnery has become deadly enough since then.

“Their coal-boxes do stink though,” said a Hoxton man in the Royal Fusiliers.  “Reminds me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War; they used to let off a lot of stuff that turned yellow.  I’ve seen Boers—­hairy men, you know, sir—­with their beards turned all yellow by them.  Regular hair-restorers, they was.”

“I remember up on the Aisne,” continued the Hoxton man, who had an ingenuous countenance, “one of our chaps shouted ‘Waiter,’ and about fifty on ’em stuck their heads up above the trenches and said, ’Coming, sir.’”

There was a shout of laughter.  The chaplain looked incredulous.  “Don’t mind him, he’s pulling your leg, sir,” said his neighbour.  It is a pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately fond.

“They can’t shoot for nuts, that’s a fact,” said a Rifleman.  “They couldn’t hit a house if they was in it.  We can give them five rounds rapid while they’re getting ready to fire one.  Fire from the hips, they do.  I never seen the likes of it.”  It was the professional criticism of the most perfectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and we listened with respect.  “But they’ve got some tidy snipers,” he added candidly.

“They was singing like an Eisteddfod,” said a man in the South Wales Borderers, “when they advanced.  Yess, they was singing splendid.  Like a cymanfa ganu,[18] it wass.  Fair play.”