One boy was sitting with his back to the beams, playing a penny
whistle very softly to himself, or perhaps to the rats under the
straws.
"The craytures are that bold," said a boy from County Cork, "that when
we first came in they sat up smilin' and sang 'God Save Ireland.'
Bedad, and it's the truth I'm after tellin' ye."
The billets were wet and dirty. But it was good to be away from the
shells, even if the rain came through the beams of a broken roof and
soaked through the plaster of wattle walls. The Irish boys were good
at making wood fires in these old barns and pigsties, if there were a
few bricks about to make a hearth, and, sure, a baked potato was no
Protestant with a grudge against the Pope.
There were no such luxuries in the trenches when the Dublins and the
Munsters were up in the firing-line at the Hohenzollern. The shelling
was so violent that it was difficult to get up the supplies, and some
of the boys had to fall back on their iron rations. It was the only
complaint which one of them made when I asked him what he thought of
his first experience under fire.
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