"Well well; but how did you come here? Where did you get that?" He
pointed to the wound on the soldier's forehead.

The soldier put his hand: up to his brow and looked dazed and puzzled.

"Well, sir," he said at last, "it was like this, to begin at the
beginning. You know how we came over in August, and there we were in
the thick of it, as you might say, in a day or two. An awful time it
was, and I don't know how I got through it alive. My best friend was
killed dead beside me as we lay in the trenches. By Cambrai, I think
it was.

"Then things got a little quieter for a bit, and I was quartered in a
village for the best part of a week. She was a very nice lady where I
was, and she treated me proper with the best of everything. Her
husband he was fighting; but she had the nicest little boy I ever
knew, a little fellow of five, or six it might be, and we got on
splendid. The amount of their lingo that kid taught me--'We, we' and
'Bong swot' and 'Commong voo potty we' and all--and I taught him
English. You should have heard that nipper say ''Arf a mo', old un!'
It was a treat.

"Then one day we got surprised. There was about a dozen of us in the
village, and two or three hundred Germans came down on us early one
morning. They got us; no help for 'it. Before we could shoot.

"Well there we were. They tied our hands behind our backs, and smacked
our faces and kicked us a bit, and we were lined up opposite the house
where I'd been staying.