a mascot," said the poilu, scrunching it up and
thrusting it into his pouch. "It'll keep me in mind of that saligaud of
a German officer I killed. He was a chic fellow, tout de meme. A boy."

VI

Australians slouched up the Street of the Three Pebbles with a grim look
under their wide-brimmed hats, having come down from Pozieres, where it
was always hell in the days of the Somme fighting. I liked the look
of them, dusty up to the eyes in summer, muddy up to their eyes in
winter--these gipsy fellows, scornful of discipline for discipline's
sake, but desperate fighters, as simple as children in their ways of
thought and speech (except for frightful oaths), and looking at life,
this life of war and this life in Amiens, with frank, curious eyes, and
a kind of humorous contempt for death, and disease, and English Tommies,
and French girls, and "the whole damned show," as they called it. They
were lawless except for the laws to which their souls gave allegiance.
They behaved as the equals of all men, giving no respect to generals or
staff-officers or the devils of hell. There was a primitive spirit of
manhood in them, and they took what they wanted, and were ready to
pay for it in coin or in disease or in wounds. They had no conceit of
themselves in a little, vain way, but they reckoned themselves the only
fighting-men, simply, and without boasting. They were hard as steel, and
finely tempered. Some of them were ruffians, but most of them were, I
imagine, like those English yeomen who came into France with the Black
Prince, men who lived "rough," close to nature, of sturdy independence,
good-humored, though fierce in a fight, and ruthless. That is how they
seemed to me, in a general way, though among them were boys of a more
delicate fiber, and sensitive, if one might judge by their clear-cut
features and wistful eyes. They had money to spend beyond the dreams of
our poor Tommy. Six shillings and sixpence a day and remittances from
home. So they pushed open the doors of any restaurant in Amiens and
sat down to table next to English officers, not abashed, and ordered
anything that pleased their taste, and wine in plenty.

In that High Street of Amiens one day I saw a crowd gathered round an
Australian, so tall that he towered over all other heads. It was at the
corner of the rue de Corps Nu sans Teste, the Street of the Naked Body
without a Head, and I suspected trouble. As I pressed on the edge of the
crowd I heard