s on my way back to Glasgow! In
forty-eight hours I woke up in Stobe Hill Infirmary and the nurse was
saying in my ear: 'Ye're all richt the noon, Tamson. We ha' only just
amputated your leg!'

"So I think I ha' been to the war, but I can only say I think so. I
only know what I was told--that ha' never seen a damn German yet!"

That is a true story of Tamson the baker. And his experience has
actually been shared by many a poor fellow--and by many another who
might have counted himself lucky if he had lost no more than a leg,
as Tamson did.

But the laddies of my battery, though they were shooting now at
Germans they could not see, had had many a close up view of Fritz in
the past, and expected many another in the future. Maybe they will
get one, some time, after the fashion of the company of which my boy
John once told me.

The captain of this company--a Hieland company, it was, though not of
John's regiment--had spent must of his time in London before the war,
and belonged to several clubs, which, in those days, employed many
Germans as servants and waiters. He was a big man, and he had a deep,
bass voice, so that he roared like the bull of Bashan when he had a
mind to raise it for all to hear.

One day things were dull in his sector. The front line trench was not
far from that of the Germans, but there was no activity beyond that
of the snipers, and the Germans were being so cautious that ours were
getting mighty few shots. The captain was bored, and so were the men.

"How would you like a pot shot, lads?" he asked.

"Fine!" came the answer. "Fine, sir!"

"Very well," said the captain. "Get ready with your rifles, and keep
your eyes on you trench."

It was not more than thirty yards away--pointblank range. The captain
waited until they were ready. And then his voice rang out in its
loudest, most commanding roar.

"Waiter!" he shouted.

Forty helmets popped up over the German parapet, and a storm of
bullets swept them away!

CHAPTER XVII

It was getting late--for men who had had so early a breakfast as we
had had to make to get started in good time. And just as I was
beginning to feel hungry--odd, it seemed to me, that such a thing as
lunch should stay in my mind in such surroundings and when so many
vastly more important things were afoot!--the major looked at his
wrist watch.

"By Jove!" he said, "Lunch time! Gentlemen--you'll accept such
hospitality as we can offer you at our officer's mess?"