is dugout with
a hearty appetite.

In one section of trenches the men made a habit of betting upon
those who would be wounded first. It had all the uncertainty of the
roulette-table... One day, when the German gunners were putting over a
special dose of hate, a sergeant kept coming to one dugout to inquire
about a "new chum," who had come up with the drafts.

"Is Private Smith all right?" he asked.

"Yes, Sergeant, he's all right," answered the men crouching in the dark
hole.

"Private Smith isn't wounded yet?" asked the, sergeant again, five
minutes later.

"No, Sergeant."

Private Smith was touched by this interest in his well-being.

"That sergeant seems a very kind man," said the boy. "Seems to love me
like a father!"

A yell of laughter answered him.

"You poor, bleeding fool!" said one of his comrades. "He's drawn you in
a lottery! Stood to win if you'd been hit."

In digging new trenches and new dugouts, bodies and bits of bodies were
unearthed, and put into sand-bags with the soil that was sent back down
a line of men concealing their work from German eyes waiting for any new
activity in our ditches.

"Bit of Bill," said the leading man, putting in a leg.

"Another bit of Bill," he said, unearthing a hand.

"Bill's ugly mug," he said at a later stage in the operations, when a
head was found.

As told afterward, that little episode in the trenches seemed immensely
comic. Generals chuckled over it. Chaplains treasured it.

How we used to guffaw at the answer of the cockney soldier who met a
German soldier with his hands up, crying: "Kamerad! Kamerad! Mercy!"

"Not so much of your 'Mercy, Kamerad,'" said the cockney. "'And us over
your bloody ticker!"

It was the man's watch he wanted, without sentiment.

One tale was most popular, most mirth-arousing in the early days of the
war.

"Where's your prisoner?" asked an Intelligence officer waiting to
receive a German sent down from the trenches under escort of an honest
corporal.

"I lost him on the way, sir," said the corporal.

"Lost him?"

The corporal was embarrassed.

"Very sorry, sir. My feelings overcame me, sir. It was like this, sir.
The man started talking on the way down. Said he was thinking of his
poor wife. I'd been thinking of mine, and I felt sorry for him. Then he
mentioned as how he had two kiddies at home. I 'ave two kiddies at 'ome,
sir, and I couldn't 'elp feeling sorry for him. Then he said as how his
old mother ha