mong the dead as if I had been one of them. It
almost turned my stomach, but I did not dare to move. The Germans were
searching the muddy ground and the least motion on my part would have
brought a dozen or so bullets my way.

Presently the light from the flare bombs died away, and I wriggled closer
to what had been Drummond. I got my arm under the shoulders of the body,
and started to crawl back to the trench. Twice a rocket went up, and I had
to lie still for minutes with my ghastly companion. The second time, a
German must have seen us move. Three bullets spattered against the ground
a few inches from me, and one struck Drummond. I suppose I was twelve or
fifteen minutes crawling back to the trench. It seemed fifteen years--an
interminable time. I was not yet thoroughly hardened to war, and it went
against my whole nature; but--I had to have clothes. We took the kilt
from Drummond's body, and I wore it for weeks. Drummond, at least, got a
decent burial, and a letter we found in his pocket we mailed to his
mother, to whom it was addressed; so perhaps the deed done with a selfish
purpose bore some good fruits after all. I may add that the stench of the
dead lingered with me for a good many days.

The night after I got Drummond's kilt, the Germans attacked us. We had
erected barbed-wire entanglements in front of our position. We had empty
jam and bully-beef tins, also empty shell cases from field guns, strung on
the wire in such a way that the least touch would attract attention.

In this manner we were notified that the Germans were in the act of
striking at us. Now they were coming--hundreds of them. There was a thin
edge of humanity first, like the sheeting of water which precedes a
breaker up a gently sloping beach. Behind it came units--more closely
bunched, and, still farther back, was a mass of soldiery almost like a
battalion on parade.

It was murder to fire into that wall of misty grey--but the men who made
it were bent on murdering us. I was firing as fast as I could. On my right
was a lad of nineteen, who was one of the 3rd battalion militia of the
Black Watch--a detachment sent to replace our losses.

"Pray God they may not pass the wire," he half sobbed with every breath.
He was afraid, but he would not run. Every man is afraid in his first
battle. The recruit's face was drawn and white--his lips a thin, pressed
line--but he fired calmly. He did not mind the bullets, but he had not yet
the "spirit of t