"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.
CHAPTER XXI (p. 292)
IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
"What do you do with your rifle, son?" I clean it every day,
And rub it with an oily rag to keep the rust away;
I slope, present and port the thing when sweating on parade.
I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is made
For me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too,
As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew.
"But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.
I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er
The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,
"Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"
The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French
summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with
star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on
the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away
on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth
where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched
the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-shells
rose and fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that (p. 293)
disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on
my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead
wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the spaces between.
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