Energy books

Long lines of Jocks were digging a support trench--digging with a kind
of rhythmic movement as they threw up the earth with their shovels.
Behind them was another line of Jocks, not working. They lay as though
asleep, out in the open. They were the dead of the last advance.
Captain Thom was leaning up against the wall of the front-line trench,
smoking a cigarette, with his steel hat on the back of his head--a
handsome, laughing figure. He did not look like a man who had just
been buried and dug out again.
"It was a narrow shave," he said. "A beastly shell covered me with a
ton of earth . . . Have a cigarette, won't you?"
We gossiped as though in St. James's Street. Other young Scottish
officers came up and shook hands, and said: "Jolly weather, isn't it?
What do you think of our little show?" Not one of them gave a glance
at the line of dead men over there, behind their parados. They told me
some of the funny things that had happened lately in the battalion,
some grim jokes by tough Jocks.


Pages:
681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705