Free And We Go On by Will R. Bird Page A

surface and left only a festering wound. Everything was indefinite and ugly and distorted.
    We continued doing working parties, and gradually we got acquainted with the rest of the company. The men were not our equals in physique and, I saw, not of equal mentality. Given equal chances and we had no need to ask favours of them in any matter. The “originals” held themselves aloof, the others were fairly friendly.
    We went back to Mount St. Eloi and were billeted in huts on the hillside. It was wet and freezing cold at night. There was little attempt to drill, for which we were truly thankful. At last we had reached a land where the most important items were not the correctness of a slope or the forming of fours by numbers.
    After the first day of sleeping and resting the men grew garrulous, and we listened eagerly to all they said. The order against fraternizing with the Germans on Christmas Day was first jeered at, and then flying pigs and“Minnies” were compared. We heard different craters mentioned glibly, such as Patricia Crater, Common Crater, Birken, Durand, and Vernon, and then we learned that an officer and party had rushed across at dusk on New Year’s Eve and captured two German prisoners without incurring a casualty. They had slipped across no man’s land without being seen and had completely surprised the two enemy sentries. I was thrilled as I listened. What adventure! Tommy could hardly remain still, and he whispered to me about it after the lights were out.
    Across from me there slept a Scotchman who was always singing “Maggie frae Dundee,” or quarreling with Stevenson, who had charge of the hut. Next him was a tall clean-built man, MacMillan, an original 92nd man. He and I became friends, and he told me about the Somme, and what he said sank in my memory.
    We had been a month in France when we went back for our second trip in the line. It was the first week of January and the wind was raw with driving rain. Once more we were on working parties, this time in the “Quarry Line,” cleaning trenches and helping with dugouts. At nights the Very lights soared like great soap bubbles and often there were salvos of shells near us. There would be a screaming, whistling sound, a clanging, crashing explosion, and clods of earth and chalk would come flying about, then smoke and fume would drift across the trench and sting our nostrils.
    All this time we had not got to know an officer, and had seldom seen one. They were in better quarters, we knew, and would not come through the mud and rain to bother us. One night Tommy and I were detained by Stevenson, who was determined to finish a parapet before we returned. We were very wet and cold and the rations were slim, six men to a loaf of bread, and only a few hard tack and tins of bully to help out. The hot tea and occasional mulligan were very acceptable. We got our mess-tins from our bunks and went over to the corner where a sullen-faced man dished out “the dinner.” He stayed in the dugout and heated it in dixies over a very “gassy” fire, and we did not envy him his lot, though he avoided all shell-fire. There was no tea for us, he said, and as we stood looking at one another Stevenson came and got his mess-tin full. I stepped forward and looked in the dixie. There was plenty more in it, and I said so very clearly. The cook looked up and snarled that we had better be in France five minutes before starting to run things, and Tommy took charge. He offered eagerly to make the fellow’s face much less an ornament than it was, andgave him just one short minute to fill his mess-tin. The cook looked up and down, and gave us our portion. Later, when we were supposed to be sleeping, I heard the “oldtimers” discussing us. It was agreed that it would be a bad policy to try to “run” us, and the cook had little sympathy.
    The next night there was great excitement. An officer and four men were to try to