oking little chap about the build
of a wooden toothpick, but he looked as if he was made of steel wire.
We soon struck up a conversation, and his "Cockney" sure did sound
funny to me; he was one of the sappers, and when he found that I had
left the Infantry to join them he was disgusted. "Well," said he, "you
are a bloomin' ass. Why, blime me, mite, this here's the worst
bleedin' job in the Army; a man digs till the sweat rolls off, and all
he gets for it is a bleedin' shilling, and he has to give six-pence of
that to the old woman; blime, it doesn't leave ye enough for bacca, and
all the fellas think this is a bomb-proof job--why, blime, you dig and
sweat for days, and Fritz sends along a blinkin' torpedo and fills up
the tunnel, and there's all your hard work gone to 'ell, and you with
it too if you 'appen to be around," and believe me I found out that
most of what he told me was true, and sapping was no bomb-proof job.
Well, we sat around all day enjoying the conversation of our Cockney
friends. I found that my new friend was nicknamed "Skinny," and during
the next few months he took a great liking to Mac and me, and he stuck
around with us most of the time.

That night at 8 o'clock the Sergeant in charge came around and detailed
eight of us to go up to the sap,--Mac, Skinny, and I were among those
chosen,--so we started off to a place known as "S. P. 13" (Strong Point
No. 13). Skinny was in the lead, as he had been there before. We went
through about a mile and a half of communicating trench, and there we
encountered three or four infantrymen bound for the front lines. The
bullets were whizzing over our heads, and once in a while a shell
dropped near us, but nothing happened till we had to come up out of the
trench and cross an open space. The infantrymen were in the lead, and
almost as soon as we struck the open one of them "got it" in the head.
Skinny was in front of me, and he stopped so suddenly that I said,
"What's wrong, Skinny?" He said, "Blime, but he's got it; I wonder how
many blinkin' kids the poor devil's left." The poor lad was killed
instantly and we picked him up and laid him on one side with his cap
over his face--the stretcher bearers would find him and carry him back
of the lines. We continued on our way, and Skinny, paying no more
attention to flying bullets than he would to flies, led us to the sap
where we were to begin work. At the entrance to this particular sap
was an immense shaft