And I ’opes that the Boches won’t git me till I gits ’im safe planted away.
(As he touches the body there is a tremendous explosion. He falls back shattered.)
A booby-trap! Ought to ’a known it! If that’s not a bastardly trick!
Well, one thing, I won’t be long goin’. Gawd! I’m a ’ell of a sight.
Wish I’d died fightin’ and killin’; that’s wot it is makes me sick.…
Ah, Joe! we’ll be pushin’ up dysies… together, old Chummie… good-night!
To-day I heard that MacBean had been killed in Belgium. I believe he turned out a wonderful soldier. Saxon Dane, too, has been missing for two months. We know what that means.
It is odd how one gets callous to death, a mediæval callousness. When we hear that the best of our friends have gone West, we have a moment of the keenest regret; but how soon again we find the heart to laugh! The saddest part of loss, I think, is that one so soon gets over it.
Is it that we fail to realize it all? Is it that it seems a strange and hideous dream, from which we will awake and rub our eyes?
Oh, how bitter I feel as the days go by! It is creeping more and more into my verse. Read this:
BONEHEAD BILL
I wonder ’oo and wot ’e was,
That ’Un I got so slick.
