Part 18

"Yus," Duquemin agreed, "dam good-hic-sort these French people. Fine lil' daughter wi' blue-hic-eyes. 'Eld my 'and, and she hic-said was brave-hic soldier. Ver' proud ... 'allo wot-hic-doing'."

A lad was kneeling in his corner, hands clasped in prayer. (He did so night after night unmolested.) The crowd watched curiously--but had anyone dare to scoff they, as Mahieu said, "would a' knocked the b---- scoffer's 'ead orf."

Strange ingrained instinctive assertion of fair play predominant in the attitude of those wild, uncouth mortals. Few of them had thought of outward expression of God--a fierce resentment world galvanise into life at the slightest sneer upon the unprotected back of those who HAD the pluck. From his couch in a solitary blanket the agnostic grunted.

"Fetish," he observed quietly, "the warrior appealing to his oracle of Delphi like a savage to his moon. Passing gods of a passing generation...."

"Yesh," Duquemin agreed sagely. "Passin' gen'ral rashon--no rashon-hic-pore-Guernseys. Oonly wot people gi'...."

The friendship originated during the Normans' first night at Vorchocq with the French grew as the days progressed, accentuated by the Norman knowledge of the people's mother-tongue.

They made the utmost of their time, lived life to the very full, inspired by the knowledge that the draft of four hundred Staffords and two hundred or so Guernseymen (the ten per cent. who had not participated at Cambrai) who were to become absorbed into the Ten Hundred were auguries of an approaching further acquaintance with the Front Line.

Christmas Day provided an ample fare in addition to the ordinary rations, small parties engaging rooms in estaminets and farms, purchasing the very limit of eatables obtainable with what financial lengths were at their disposal, obtained bottles of port and gave vent to an unbounded vein of hilarious humour and uproarious chorus in celebration of a Christmas that many knew would be their last.

In a quiet room four of the ascetic rankers (Clarke, Martel, Lomar and White) passed an evening that will long remain a pleasant memory, tempered with pain for the one who soon afterwards paid the Supreme Sacrifice.

Everywhere uproar was rampant. Light, laughter, and good cheer maintained undisputed sway upon all. Rose-cheeked daughters of France were toasted again and again, taken into muscular arms and kissed times without number.

The old marching rallies of the Ten Hundred were roared out from every tiny house ablaze with light, echoed out into the inscrutable pall of black and wafted far away into the shadows.

And they toasted the "Old Battalion," the warriors who were lying in the damp Masnières soil; the Future; and God's own Isle--their little motherland. It hurt, how it hurt! How the tiny green island rose mistily before the eyes in all its sun-bathed romance and mystery! How the sweet aroma of its gold, furze-crowned cliffs, the laughter of blue waters, the lowing of cattle, came flooding with glad memories on the mind ... and YOU may not ever again scent that furze or glimpse those waters!

They laughed memory back into its dim past. WHAT of the future? Live only for the present!

Bunny was happy. Reclining gracefully in the gutter he sang a jumbled lullaby of melodies.

"There's maggots in the cheese, You can 'ear the beggars sneeze--"

He struggled manfully to his feet, fell into a helpless fit of laughter and collapsed again into the roadway with a heavy grunt. An N.C.O. found him there a few minutes later.

"'Ere," he demanded, "wot are you doin' there?"

"Doin'," Bunny chuckled helplessly: "wot think I'm doin ... plantin' daisies or diggin' for gold?"

"Look 'ere, me lad, if you're lookin' for trouble--!"

"Lookin' for trouble?--not lookin' for anything. Just 'avin' a rest by the wayside an' gazin' at stars."

"Well, get up or I'll 'old you up, an' you'll SEE 'em then."

"Or-righ'. Want, want, lil' drop toddy?"

"Got much? Pass it over."

"Ain't got none. Only asked if you WANT a-a drop...." He moved away and from far down the street his dirge carried faintly:

"There's whiskers on the pork We curl 'em with a fork--."

In unhappy contract to Christmas. New Year proved to be a day of short rations, bully beef and a rehearsal of an attack in the snow. The bread ration dwindled down to Winkleian proportions.

A move up the line was pending in the near future and rumours that of all hellish sectors they were going up the Passchendaele-Ypres areas, were received with continuous outbursts of growling.

The young Staffords who had not the gruesome knowledge of Belgian desolation were satisfied with a front anywhere near the magic Ypres. They wanted to see the place where, as one of them was perpertually saying. "A couple of Blighty regiments made a bloomin' 'ell of a mess of the whole blooming' Jerry army."