No blurry fear. The 'ead was a sandbag. I'll bet yer the shot
they send back will come nearer me than you. Bet yer a copper."

Kore:--"Done." (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.) (p. 234)
"I think they're firing at you."

Bill:--"Not me, matey, but you. It's their aiming that's bad. 'And
over the coin." (Enter an officer.)

Officer:--"Don't keep your heads over the parapet, you'll get sniped.
Keep under cover as much as possible."

Bill:--"Orl right, Sir."

Kore:--"Yes, sir." (Exit Officer.)

Bill:--"They say there's a war 'ere."

Kore:--"It's only a rumour."

At Cuinchy where the German trenches are hardly a hundred yards away
from ours, the firing from the opposite trenches ceased for a moment
and a voice called across.

"What about the Cup Final?" It was then the finish of the English
football season.

"Chelsea lost," said Bill, who was a staunch supporter of that team.

"Hard luck!" came the answer from the German trench and firing was
resumed. But Bill used his rifle no more until we changed into a new
locality. "A blurry supporter of blurry Chelsea," he said. "'E must be
a damned good sort of sausage-eater, that feller. If ever I meet 'im
in Lunnon after the war, I'm goin' to make 'im as drunk as a (p. 235)
public-'ouse fly."

"What are you going to do after the war?" I asked.

He rubbed his eyes which many sleepless nights in a shell-harried
trench had made red and watery.

"What will I do?" he repeated. "I'll get two beds," he said, "and have
a six months' snooze, and I'll sleep in one bed while the other's
being made, matey."

In trench life many new friends are made and many old friendships
renewed. We were nursing a contingent of Camerons, men new to the
grind of trench work, and most of them hailing from Glasgow and the
West of Scotland. On the morning of the second day one of them said to
me, "Big Jock MacGregor wants to see you."

"Who's Big Jock?" I asked.

"He used to work on the railway at Greenock," I was told, and off I
went to seek the man.

I found him eating bully beef and biscuit on the parapet. He was
spotlessly clean, he had not yet stuck his spoon down the rim of his
stocking where his skein should have been, he had a table knife (p. 236)
and fork (things that we, old soldiers, had dispensed with ages ago),
in short, he was a hat-box fellow, togged up to the nines, and as yet,
green to the grind of war.

His age might be forty, he looked fifty,