s,
corporals ten, and sergeants fifteen to twenty a week. That's a lot
of money. Anything left over was held back to be paid when we got
to Blighty. Parcels and mail came along with perfect regularity on
that hike. It was and is a marvel to me how they do it. A battalion
chasing around all over the place gets its stuff from Blighty day
after day, right on the tick and without any question. I only hope
that whatever the system is, our army will take advantage of it. A
shortage of letters and luxury parcels is a real hardship.

We finally brought up at a place called Oneux (pronounced Oh, no)
and were there five days. I fell into luck here. It was customary,
when we were marching on some unsuspecting village, to send the
quartermaster sergeants ahead on bicycles to locate billets. We had
an old granny named Cypress, better known as Lizzie. The other
sergeants were accustomed to flim-flam Lizzie to a finish on the
selection of billets, with the result that C company usually slept
in pigpens of stables.

The day we approached Oneux, Lizzie was sick, and I was delegated
to his job. I went into the town with the three other quartermaster
sergeants, got them into an _estaminet_, bought about a dollar's
worth of drinks, sneaked out the back door, and preempted the
schoolhouse for C company. I also took the house next door, which
was big and clean, for the officers. We were royally comfortable
there, and the other companies used the stables that usually fell
to our lot.

As a reward, I suspect, I was picked for Orderly Corporal, a cushy
job. We all of us had it fairly easy at Oneux. It was hot weather,
and nights we used to sit out in the schoolhouse yard and talk
about the war.

Some of the opinions voiced out there with more frankness than any
one would dare to use at home would, I am sure, shock some of the
patriots. The fact is that any one who has fought in France wants
peace, and the sooner the better.

We had one old-timer, out since Mons, who habitually, night after
night, day after day, would pipe up with the same old plaint.
Something like this:

"Hi arsks yer. Wot are we fightin' for? Wot'd th' Belgiums hever do
fer us? Wot? Wot'd th' Rooshians hever do fer us? Wot's th' good of
th' Frenchies? Wot's th' good of hanybody but th' Henglish? Gawd
lumme! I'm fed up."

And yet this man had gone out at the beginning and would fight
like the very devil, and I verily believe will be homesick for the
trenches if he