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It was the spirit of the
old city and the pride of it which helped him to suffer, and in his
daydreams was the clanging of 'buses from Charing Cross to the Bank,
the lights of the embankment reflected in the dark river, the back
yard where he had kept his bicycle, or the suburban garden where he
had watered his mother's plants . . . London! Good old London! . . .
His heart ached for it sometimes when, as sentry, he stared across the
parapet to the barbed wire in No Man's Land.
One night, strolling outside my own billet and wandering down the lane
a way, I heard the sound of singing coming from a big brick barn on
the roadside. I stood close under the blank wall at the back of the
building, and listened. The men were singing "Auld Lang Syne" to the
accompaniment of a concertina and a mouth-organ. They were taking
parts, and the old tune--so strange to hear out in a village of
France, in the war zone--sounded very well, with deep-throated
harmonies. Presently the concertina changed its tune, and the men of
the New Army sang "God Save the King.


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