very yard of it. But John Wood, who lived
in it, was astoundingly cheerful, and a fine, sturdy, gallant figure,
in his kilted dress, as he climbed over sand-bags, walked on the top of
communication trenches (not bothering to take cover) and skirting round
hedges of barbed wire, apparently unconscious of the "crumps" that were
bursting around. I found laughter and friendly greeting in a hole in the
earth where the battalion staff was crowded. The colonel was courteous,
but busy. He rather deprecated the notion that I should go up farther,
to the ultimate limit of our line. It was no use putting one's head into
trouble without reasonable purpose, and the German guns had been blowing
in sections of his new-made trenches. But John Wood was insistent that
I should meet "old Thom," afterward in command of the battalion. He had
just been buried and dug out again. He would like to see me. So we left
the cover of the dugout and took to the open again. Long lines of Jocks
were digging a support trench--digging with a kind of rhythmic movement
as they threw up the earth with their shovels. Behind them was another
line of Jocks, not working. They lay as though asleep, out in the open.
They were the dead of the last advance. Captain Thom was leaning up
against the wall of the front-line trench, smoking a cigarette, with his
steel hat on the back of his head--a handsome, laughing figure. He did
not look like a man who had just been buried and dug out again.

"It was a narrow shave," he said. "A beastly shell covered me with a ton
of earth... Have a cigarette, won't you?"

We gossiped as though in St. James's Street. Other young Scottish
officers came up and shook hands, and said: "Jolly weather, isn't it?
What do you think of our little show?" Not one of them gave a glance at
the line of dead men over there, behind their parados. They told me some
of the funny things that had happened lately in the battalion, some grim
jokes by tough Jocks. They had a fine crowd of men. You couldn't beat
them. "Well, good morning! Must get on with the job." There was no
anguish there, no sense of despair, no sullen hatred of this life, so
near to death. They seemed to like it... They did not really like it.
They only made the best of it, without gloom. I saw they did not like
this job of battle, one evening in their mess behind the line. The
colonel who commanded them at the time, Celt of the Celts, was in a
queer mood. He was a queer man, aloof in h