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."

"And what do you boys do?" asked the chaplain. "Do you sing too?"

"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters, "I used every name but a
saint's name." The speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was Church
of England, or he might have been less candid.

"There was a mon in oor company," said the red-headed one, feeling it
was his turn again, "that killed seven Jerrmans--he shot six and
baynitted anither. And he wur fair fou[19] afterwards. He grat like a
bairn."

"Aye, mon," said a ruddy man of the Yorks L.I., "ah knaw'd ah felt mysen
dafflin[20] wh