‘There’s good an’ bad,’ said Pacey, mildly, ‘an’ if there’s more bad than good, I don’t know but the good don’t wear better. But there’s nought sure in this world, no more.’

‘No, an’ never ’as been,’ said Madeley, pessimistically.

‘There’s nought sure for us’ns, anyway,’ said Weeper, relapsing. ‘Didst ’ear what Cap’n Thompson read out this mornin’, about stoppin’ to ’elp any poor bugger what was wounded? The bloody brass-’at what wrote that letter ’as never been in any big show ’isself, that a dare swear. ’e’s one o’ them buggers as is never nearer to the real thing than G.H.Q.’

‘You don’t want to talk like that,’ said Corporal Hamley. ‘You’ve ’ad your orders.’

‘A don’t mind tellin’ thee, corporal,’ said Weeper, again lifting a large flat hand, as though by that gesture he stopped the mouths of all the world. ‘A don’t mind tellin’ thee, that if a see a chum o’ mine down, an’ a can do aught to ’elp ’im, all the brass-’ats in the British Army, an’ there’s a bloody sight too many o’ ’em, aren’t goin’ to stop me. A’ll do what’s right, an’ if a know aught about thee, tha’lt do as I do.’

‘You don’t want to talk about it, anyway,’ said Corporal Hamley, quietly. ‘I’m not sayin’ you’re not right: I’d do what any other man’d do; but there’s no need to make a song about it.’

‘What beats me,’ said Shem, sniggering, ‘is that the bloody fool who wrote that instructional letter, doesn’t seem to know what any ordinary man would do in the circumstances. We all know that there must be losses, you can’t expect to take a trench without some casualties; but they seem to go on from saying that losses are unavoidable, to thinking that they’re necessary, and from that, to thinking that they don’t matter.’

‘They don’t know what we’ve got to go through, that’s the truth of it,’ said Weeper. ‘They measure the distance, an’ they count the men, an’ the guns, an’ think a battle’s no’ but a sum you can do wi’ a pencil an’ a bit o’ paper.’

‘I heard Mr Pardew talking to Mr Rhys about a course he’d been on, and he told him a brass-hat had been lecturing them on the lessons of the Somme offensive, and gave them an estimate of the total German losses; and then an officer at the back of the room got up, and asked him if he could give them any information about the British losses, and the brass-hat said: No, and looked at them as though they were a lot of criminals.’

‘It’s a fact,’ said Glazier; ‘whether you’re talkin’ to a civvy or whether you’re talkin’ to a brass-’at, an’ some o’ the officers aren’t no better, if you tell the truth, they think you’re a bloody coward. They’ve not got our experience, an’ they don’t face it as us’ns do.’

‘Give them a chance,’ said Bourne, reasonably; he hadn’t spoken before, he usually sat back and listened quietly to these debates.