"Not a single casualty," said one of the officers when the storm of
shells ended with a few last concussions and a rumble of falling
bricks. "Anything wrong with our luck?"
Everything was all right with the luck of this battalion of the New
Army in its first experience of war on the first night in the danger-
zone. No damage was done even when two shells came into one of their
billets, where a number of men were sleeping after a hard day and a
long march.
"I woke up pretty quick," said one of them, "and thought the house had
fallen in. I was out of it before the second came. Then I laughed. I'm
a heavy sleeper, you know. [He spoke as if I knew his weakness.] My
mother bought me an alarm-clock last birthday. 'Perhaps you'll be down
for breakfast now,' she said. But a shell is better--as a knocker-up.
I didn't stop to dress."
Death had missed him by a foot or two, but he laughed at the fluke of
his escape.
"K.'s men" had not forgotten how to laugh after those eleven months of
hard training, and they found a joke in grisly things which do not
appeal humorously to sensitive men.
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