for a cane, but the rest--into the fire! Then the arm-chairs in the
drawing-room went by degrees--mahogany, they were. He did 'em in and
cut them up by night, case some N.C.O. had something to say about it."

"He knew his way about," said Pepin. "As for us, we got busy with an
old suite of furniture that lasted us a fortnight."

"And what for should we be without? You've got to make dinner, and
there's no wood or coal. After the grub's served out, there you are
with your jaws empty, with a pile of meat in front of you, and in the
middle of a lot of pals that chaff and bullyrag you!"

"It's the War Office's doing, it isn't ours."

"Hadn't the officers a lot to say about the pinching?"

"They damn well did it themselves, I give you my word! Desmaisons, do
you remember Lieutenant Virvin's trick, breaking down a cellar door
with an ax? And when a poilu saw him at it, he gave him the door for
firewood, so that he wouldn't spread it about."

"And poor old Saladin, the transport officer. He was found coming out
of a basement in the dusk with two bottles of white wine in each arm,
the sport, like a nurse with two pairs of twins. When he was spotted,
they made him go back down to the wine-cellar, and serve out bottles
for everybody. But Corporal Bertrand, who is a man of scruples,
wouldn't have any. Ah, you remember that, do you, sausage-foot!"

"Where's that cook now that always found wood?" asks Cadilhac.

"He's dead. A bomb fell in his stove. He didn't get it, but he's dead
all the same--died of shock when he saw his macaroni with its legs in
the air. Heart seizure, so the doc' said. His heart was weak--he was
only strong on wood. They gave him a proper funeral--made him a coffin
out of the bedroom floor, and got the picture nails out of the walls to
fasten 'em together, and used bricks to drive 'em in. While they were
carrying him off, I thought to myself, 'Good thing for him he's dead.
If he saw that, he'd never be able to forgive himself for not having
thought of the bedroom floor for his fire.'--Ah, what the devil are you
doing, son of a pig?"

Volpatte offers philosophy on the rude intrusion of a passing fatigue
party: "The private gets along on the back of his pals. When you spin
your yarns in front of a fatigue gang, or when you take the best bit or
the best place, it's the others that suffer."

"I've often," says Lamuse, "put up dodges so as not to go into the
trenches, and it's come off no end of times. I o