oding.
In the Decameron of Boccaccio a group of men and women encompassed by
plague retired into seclusion to tell one another mirthful immoralities
which stirred their laughter. They laughed while the plague destroyed
society around them and when they knew that its foul germs were on
the prowl for their own bodies... So it was in this war, where in many
strange places and in many dreadful days there was great laughter. I
think sometimes of a night I spent with the medical officers of a tent
hospital in the fields of the Somme during those battles. With me as a
guest went a modern Falstaff, a "ton of flesh," who "sweats to death and
lards the lean earth as he walks along."

He was a man of many anecdotes, drawn from the sinks and stews of life,
yet with a sense of beauty lurking under his coarseness, and a voice of
fine, sonorous tone, which he managed with art and a melting grace.

On the way to the field hospital he had taken more than one nip of
whisky. His voice was well oiled when he sang a greeting to a medical
major in a florid burst of melody from Italian opera. The major was a
little Irish medico who had been through the South African War and in
tropical places, where he had drunk fire-water to kill all manner of
microbes. He suffered abominably from asthma and had had a heart-seizure
the day before our dinner at his mess, and told us that he would drop
down dead as sure as fate between one operation and another on "the
poor, bloody wounded" who never ceased to flow into his tent. But he was
in a laughing mood, and thirsty for laughter-making liquid. He had two
whiskies before the dinner began to wet his whistle. His fellow-officers
were out for an evening's joy, but nervous of the colonel, an austere
soul who sat at the head of the mess with the look of a man afraid that
merriment might reach outrageous heights beyond his control. A courteous
man he was, and rather sad. His presence for a time acted as a restraint
upon the company, until all restraint was broken by the Falstaff with
me, who told soul-crashing stories to the little Irish major across the
table and sang love lyrics to the orderly who brought round the cottage
pie and pickles. There was a tall, thin young surgeon who had been
carving up living bodies all day and many days, and now listened to that
fat rogue with an intensity of delight that lit up his melancholy eyes,
watching him gravely between gusts of deep laughter, which seemed to
come from