In actual battle they were hardly strong enough and could not carry
all that burden of fighting-kit--steel helmet, rifle, hand-grenades,
shovels, empty sand-bags--with which other troops went into action. So
they were used as support troops mostly, behind the Black Watch and
other battalions near Bazentin and Longueval, and there these poor
little men dug and dug like beavers and crouched in the cover they
made under damnable fire, until many of them were blown to bits. There
was no "glory" in their job, only filth and blood, but they held the
ground and suffered it all, not gladly. They had a chance of taking
prisoners at Longueval, where they rummaged in German dugouts after
the line had been taken by the 15th Scottish Division and the 3d, and
they brought back a number of enormous Bavarians who were like the
Brobdingnagians to these little men of Lilliput and disgusted with
that humiliation. I met the whole crowd of them after that adventure,
as they sat, half naked, picking the lice out of their shirts, and the
conversation I had with them remains in my memory because of its
grotesque humor and tragic comicality.
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