They
hated that canal-bank and dreaded it, but they jested in their
dugouts, and there was the laughter of men who hid the fear in their
hearts and were "game" until some bit of steel plugged them with a
gaping wound or tore their flesh to tatters.
VI
Because the enemy was on the high ground and our men were in the low
ground, many of our trenches were wet and waterlogged, even in summer,
after heavy rain. In winter they were in bogs and swamps, up by St.-
Eloi and southward this side of Gommecourt, and in many other evil
places. The enemy drained his water into our ditches when he could,
with the cunning and the science of his way of war, and that made our
men savage.
I remember going to the line this side of Fricourt on an August day in
'15. It was the seventeenth of August, as I have it in my diary, and
the episode is vivid in my mind because I saw then the New Army lads
learning one of the lessons of war in one of the foulest places. I
also learned the sense of humor of a British general, and afterward,
not enjoying the joke, the fatalistic valor of officers and men (in
civil life a year before) who lived with the knowledge that the ground
beneath them was mined and charged with high explosives, and might
hurl them to eternity between the whiffs of a cigarette.
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