XII

"PONGO" SIMPSON ON GRUMBLERS

I was in my dug-out, trying to write a letter by the intermittent light
of a candle which was extinguished from time to time by the rain drops
that came through the roof, when I suddenly heard the squelching of mud,
the sound of slipping, and an appalling splash. Someone had fallen into
the shell hole just outside.

I waited a moment, and I heard the well-known voice of "Pongo" Simpson.
"Strike me pink!" he spluttered, as he scrambled up the steep bank out
of the water. "An' I gone an' forgot me soap. The first bath as I've 'ad
for six weeks, too." And he blundered into my dug-out, a terrible object
covered in slimy mud from head to foot, and when he breathed little
showers of mud flew off his moustache.

"Hullo," I said, "you seem to be wet."

"Sorry, sir," said "Pongo," "I thought as 'ow this was my dug-out. Wet,
sir? Gawd! Yes, I should think I was wet," and he doubled up to show
me, while a thin stream of muddy water trickled from his hair on to my
letter. "'Owever, it ain't no good to grumble, an' it's better to fall
in a shell hole than to 'ave a shell fall on me. I've got some 'ot tea
in me own dug-out, too."

When he had gone, I crumpled up my muddy letter, and I confess that I
purposely listened to his conversation, for his dug-out was only
separated from mine by a few horizontal logs piled up on each other.

"Well, you see, it ain't no good to grouse," he was saying to someone.
"I've got mud up me nose an' in me eyes, and all down me neck, but it
won't go away 'owever much I grumbles. Now, there's some blokes as
grouses all the time--'ere, Bert, you might 'and over your knife a
moment to scrape the mud off me face, it all cracks, like, when I
talk--if they've got a Maconochie ration they wants bully beef, an' if
they've got bully beef they carn't abear nothink but Maconochie. If you
told 'em as 'ow the war was goin' to end to-morrow they'd either call
you a bloomin' liar, or grouse like 'ell becos they 'adn't 'ad the time
to win the V.C.

"There was young Alf Cobb. 'E wasn't arf a grouser, an' 'e 'ad good luck
all the bloomin' time. When 'e came to the front they put 'im along o'
the transport becos 'e'd been a jockey before the war, an' 'e groused
all the time that 'e didn't 'ave none of the fun of the fightin'. Fun of
the fightin', indeed, when 'e'd got that little gal what we used to
call Gertie less than ten minutes from the stables! She was a nice
little bi