them down. It was like
killing a lot of kids who had come to have a game with us. The one I
potted got his arms round me before he coughed himself out, calling me
his 'liebe Elsa,' and wanting to kiss me. Lord! You can guess how the
Boche ink-slingers spread themselves over that business: 'Sonderbar!
Colossal! Unvergessliche Helden.' Poor devils!"

"They'll give us ginger before it is over," said another. He had had
both his lips torn away, and appeared to be always laughing. "Stuff it
into us as if we were horses at a fair. That will make us run forward,
right enough."

"Oh, come," struck in a youngster who was lying perfectly flat, face
downwards on his bed: it was the position in which he could breathe
easiest. He raised his head a couple of inches and twisted it round so
as to get his mouth free. "It isn't as bad as all that. Why, the Thirty-
third swarmed into Fort Malmaison of their own accord, though 'twas like
jumping into a boiling furnace, and held it for three days against pretty
nearly a division. There weren't a dozen of them left when we relieved
them. They had no ammunition left. They'd just been filling up the gaps
with their bodies. And they wouldn't go back even then. We had to drag
them away. 'They shan't pass,' 'They shan't pass!'--that's all they kept
saying." His voice had sunk to a thin whisper.

A young officer was lying in a corner behind a screen. He leant forward
and pushed it aside.

"Oh, give the devil his due, you fellows," he said. "War isn't a pretty
game, but it does make for courage. We all know that. And things even
finer than mere fighting pluck. There was a man in my company, a Jacques
Decrusy. He was just a stupid peasant lad. We were crowded into one end
of the trench, about a score of us. The rest of it had fallen in, and we
couldn't move. And a bomb dropped into the middle of us; and the same
instant that it touched the ground Decrusy threw himself flat down upon
it and took the whole of it into his body. There was nothing left of him
but scraps. But the rest of us got off. Nobody had drugged him to do
that. There isn't one of us who was in that trench that will not be a
better man to the end of his days, remembering how Jacques Decrusy gave
his life for ours."

"I'll grant you all that, sir," answered the young soldier who had first
spoken. He had long, delicate hands and eager, restless eyes. "War does
bring out heroism. So does pestilen