The fighting mascot : the true story of a boy soldier

I IHE FIGHTING
" MASCOT

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

THE KING OF ENGLAND .VAS ,qHAKIN(_; HANI),q VI,'ITH IE I.
Page

THE
FIGHTING MASCOT

The True Story of a Boy Soldier

BY
THOMAS JOSEPH KEHOE
Rfm. No. zo3144 , ;th King's Liverpool Regiment
THE BOY SOLDIER HIMSELF

Illustrated by Christopher Clark, R.L

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY

FOREWORD

Bit by bit l've told tbis story of my adventures at
recruiting meetings and Red Cross rallies and to lads
l've met here and there on land and sea--told whatever
scrap of it came into my head and let the rest go for
another rime.
I never could piece it ail together the way it ought
tobe, and I was never a good hand at the writing.
So l've found a writing man who knows a thing or
two about how to straighten it ail out, and how to put
the first part at the beginning and the last part at the
end, and the fighting and the talking and the rest in
where they belong, while he drops what don't marrer
much into his scrap basket.
He's dropped more into that basket than I wanted
him to, some fine songs I wrote for him from my own
head having gone there; but the story's ail here, vith
the hard words spelled right, and everything clear and
sensible, which is more than ever I could bave donc
myself.
THOMAS JOSEPH KEHOE, Rfm.

P.S.--The writing man's name is E. L. Bacon, if
anybody should wish to know.
V

CONTENTS

CHAPo
L
ll.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Vll.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
Xll.
Xlll.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.

SQUEEZING IN THROUGH THE BAND
INTO THE BIG NOISE
IN DEAD MEN'S ALLE¥
THE COLONEL GETS A VARNING o
THE GERMANS COME
THE LOST PATROL
GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT
HEROES AND COWARDS
«« HARD LUCK " PROPHESIES AGAIN -
« (IVE 'EM THE BAYONET."
IT'S THE FIGHTING FIFTH
THE MAD WOMAN OF 'PRES -
SOLDIERS THREE
BOMBS -
GROPING IN THE DARK
THE LOW-DOWN CUR
BONESE¥ BECOMES A HERO
THE IIAN FROM AMERICA-
ON THE MARCH-
SlNKING IN THE BOG -
vil

Page
I
8
'5
20
26
34
4 z
49
56
71
79
85
9 l
lOI
Il 3

VIII
CH.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.

CONTENTS

THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS
VICTIMS OF THE ]-]UNS -
A Ev LAVS US -
THE FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE
As OLO PAL "GoEs WEST"
INTO THE TRENCHES AGAIN -
I MEET «ISRAEL HANDS" -
«« GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS ]" -
] MEET THE KING -
THE LAST ADVENTURE

Page
39
49
59
68

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE KING OF ENGLAND WAS SItAKING HANDS W'iTH ME. 
Fron tispiece

HE STAGGERED AND FELL OVER MV (UN -

WE GOT SIGHT OF A GERMAN GUARD LOOKING OVER
TilE TOP-

Page

BULLETS BEOAN TO FLV» AND THE L1GHTS WENT UP ONE
AFTER ANOTHER 1 12

THE
FIGHTING MASCOT

CHAPTER I

Squeezing in through the Band

I'm glad I never could learn to play a bugle.
If ever I had caught the trick of it I should be
blowing it yet, with never a look-in at the fighting.
" If we was fightin' the Germans with chunes,"
the Bandmaster told me, "we'd have ye in the
front trenches, me lad, and there'd be a Hun drop
dead every time ye gave a toot."
I got to the front trenches all right, but not
with a bugle. I carried a gun. I was three
years too young for the firing-line--just turned
sixteen at my first battlembut the Colonel
couldn't stand my bugling any longer.
I was a Liverpool lad before I went to war.
There's good seafaring blood in my veins, and
I might have gone to sea myself. But my
mother would say"

a THE FIGHTING MASCOT
" Stick to the dry land, Tom. Your father
was a sailorman, and now he's gone to the
bottom, and his ship with him. Stick to the
dry land, my lad. There's too many dangers
at sea."
So l've stuck to it. But l've been through
more dangers on land, and been closer to death
a hundred times, than ever I should have been
on the water. There's a bullet-hole in my thigh,
and the scar from the butt of a German's gun on
my head, and I should never bave got them if
I had followed the sea, the days of pirates being
over.
My mother and my stepfather lire at 15 Maria
Street, and the windows of out home look out
over the big pier's head on the River Mersey,
where the liners corne in. There's a little room
up under the roof in that house where many's the
night l've sat propped up in bed reading Treasure
lsland by candle-light, l'll hOt soon forget the
awful shock it gave me when my mother would
glide in and take the candle away just when the
pirates were doing their worst.
I read that grand old book so many times that
I shouldn't wonder if I could recite it backward if
I tried. The more I read it the more I longed to
sail away with a ship and see the world. But,
remembering what my mother had said, I made
up my mind that I should have to look for my
adventures on land if there were any for me to
find at all. If only I had lived in the days of Jim

SQUEEZING IN THROUGH THE BAND 3
Hawkins and Long John Silver there would have
been plenty of them, but I was afraid I had been
born about one hundred and fifty years too late
for such things.
That's what I was thinking just before the big
war broke loose, which brought more adventures
than Jim Hawkins ever dreamed of. But how
could I know the war was coming?
I meant to get into that war, even though I
was too young. It was too good to miss, and
there might not be another in a lifetime. I had
blown a bugle a few times--just about enough to
make a noise through it--and I thought that if
they weren't very particular about how the music
sounded I might get into the band of the Fifth
King's Liverpool Regiment, where Billy Collins,
who lived almost next door to us, was a rifleman.
That would be a step towards getting into the
fighting ranks.
I managed it without much trouble, and went
with the battalion to Camp Oswestry, the training-
camp near Cardiff. Nobody asked me whether
I was much of a bugler, and there was no reason
why I should tell them. They would find out
soon enough. And they did. The Colonel said
I was the worst bugler in the service of the
Ring, and what the Bandmaster said was even
worse.
By that rime some of the riflemen wanted me
as a mascot to bring them luck, and they did their
best to help me get into the ranks. I weighed

4 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
only ninety-six pounds, and my height was only
four feet ten, so it was hard to convince the
Colonel that I was big enough, but the more he
heard my bugling the more he seemed to like the
idea of my carrying a gun. And at last he ruade
a rifleman of me. I had to throw in three years
to my age for good measure. I hope I may be
forgiven for that one, for my mother brought me
up to tell the truth. Anyway, it was in a good
cause.
In May, 1917, a batch of men was being made
up for France, and our battalion was chosen. I
took the train for Liverpool to say good-bye to
my mother and my stepfather and my friends.
It was hard at home to say good-bye, for my
mother cried over me, and said she couldn't see
why I wanted to go and fight at my age and corne
home with bullet-holes through me, and that it
had been better had I gone to sea. But she
screwed up her courage when it came time for me
to go, and when I left the house she came running
after me, threw her arms around me, and tried to
keep back the tears. As I marched down the
street she stood in the door and cried after me
words that came into my mind many a rime after
that:
" Be brave, have faith in God--and corne back
home!"
That night we crossed England on the train,
and the following morning rolled into Folkestone
on the Channel. It was May I6, I97--my

SQUEEZING IN THROUGH THE BAND 5

sixteenth birthday. That day we sailed for
France.
At the end of the first day's march toward the
front there came a drizzling rain. A few hundred
yards back from the road an old barn stood on
the side of a hill, and it seemed to me it was just
the kind of lodging I wanted. I found the door
closed, and when I tried to open it a chorus of
voices cried out:
"No room! No room! Get out!"
The Tommies were wedged in so close they
were almost sleeping on top of one another.
I prowled around to the rear, where I found a
dog-house built against the wall. I took off my
pack, got down on hands and knees, and began
to creep in. Suddenly a man's foot was planted
on top of my head and shoved me back.
"Well, blind me eyes!" somebody croaked
inside. " I thought it was the dog corne back.
Welcome to me 'umble 'orne, ye little swab.
Corne in!"
It was so dark inside that I couldn't see him
at first, but as he seemed to be lying full length,
and as the dog-house wasn't much more than
rive feet long, I knew he couldn't be very big,
especially as there was plenty of room for me
alongside him. •
"Seems just like 'orne, matey," he said.
"Many's the night in my young days in the old
country l've slept in a dog-'ouse."
I thought, " This chap must bave been a tramp

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

before he joined the army". I asked him if the
dogs never objected.
"I never knew 'em hOt to," he answered.
"'But I'm death on dogs, matey. A bloke in
my trade can't spend much time arguin' with 'em.
He's got to know 'ow to settle 'em."
"What's your trade?" I asked.
"Well, matey, a sort of a night-worker's job
was mine. Detective Martin, from Scotland
Yard, who's now in A Company, could tell you
a thing or two about wot I did. Knows all
about me. Been keepin' an eye on me hever
since we left England. Did you never 'ear of
Bonesey? Well, that's me."
Yes, I had heard of him, and I began to wish
I hadn't crept into that dog-house. The men in
A Company had been talking about Bonesey only
that day. They said he had been one of the
cleverest housebreakers in England.
My eyes were getting used to the dark, and
I took a look at him. His naine certainly suited
him, for he didn't seem to be much but skin and
bones, though he looked healthy enough and as if
he might be as strong as iron, as some bony men
are. He was a middle-aged chap, whose hair was
turning grey. He had sharp little eyes, a hard
mouth, and an old scar lay across his uose. I
thought that with a dark lantern in one hand,
and a pistol in the other, he must bave been a
desperate-looking lad when doing his house-
breaking.
( o 06 )

SQUEEZING IN THROUGH THE BAND 7

That night I dreamed that Bonesey had crept
into my room at home and was holding a gun at
my head.
Next day we were together on the march, and
from that day on through six months of fighting
we were pals.

CHAPTER II

Into the Big Noise

The next day we passed through little villages
where houses and churches had been torn with
shells. Sometimes there would be nothing left
of a village but ruins, with not a living thing in
sight except now and then a lonely cat or dog.
The noise of the guns was growing louder and
louder. Boom! boom! boom! Even the ground
seemed to shake. By afternoon we heard for the
first time the rattle ofmachine-guns. Typewriters
was the name we learned for them after we got
to the trenches, and they sound just enough like
them to make a chap think of some girl pounding
the keys in an office at home.
Oh, home and mother! Was I ever going to
sec them again!
We knew when we heard the clickety-click of
those typewriters that we were getting very near.
I began to feel afraid. I couldn't help it. I felt
myself shaking; I could hardly hold my rifle.
Billy Matchett, who was marching next to me,
laughed. He had nerves of iron, that lad. The
noise of the guns made him more and more
8

INTO THE BIG NOISE 9

cheerful the louder it grew. But there were other
men--big chaps, too--who were shaking more
than I was. They were as white as sheets, and
one of them fainted and dropped in the road. He
was a poor lad the Tommies had been calling
"Windy Dick" because he had been frightened
ever since we left England. Windy is a word in
the trenches to describe a chap who is nervous
and jurnpy under tire.
But Windy Dick was a good enough sort at
heart. He just couldn't help beingafraid. While
we were crossing the Channel he thought of
nothing but submarines, and he had begun to
shake the very first day we heard the guns. He
had been shaking ever since. When I saw him
drop I felt sorry for him and thought of what he
had said to me one day on the march:
"Tommy,"--and his voice was shaking even
thenm"l hope I get shot before I'm caught run-
ning away or doing anything like that. It isn't
that I'm not willing to die if I have to. It's the
fear of disgracing myself that worries me. I just
can't help being afraid. It's my nerves."
We left the poor chap for the water-carts to
pick up. He was going to have ail the chance in
the world to show himself a man later on.
It was queer, but the sight of Windy and those
other frightened lads braced me up, and the shaky
feeling left me after a time.
Once we got a glimpse of Ypres, far off--a
ghostly lot of ruins; broken steeples, roofless

o THE FIGHTING MASCOT

houses, tumbling walls. Beyond it was a stretch
of open ground without a tree or even a blade
of grass, for the shells had ploughed up every
inch of earth and pitted it with holes. Farther
off were low hills, half-covered with patches of
woods.
I thought they were going to send us right into
the fighting at the end of that day, but they didn't.
Instead, we slept beside the road, while our ears
buzzed with a noise like the pounding ofa thousand
boiler-makers on sheet-iron. Yet with ail that
clatter most of the lads went sound asleep as soon
as they were curled in their blankets, and didn't
wake till morning.
But Billy Collins, Billy Matchett, old Bonesey,
and I cuddled up together and talked things over.
Three of us were pals already, and naturally got
together whenever we had a chance and needed a
little consolation, but Bonesey, who hadn't been
in the same company with us till we got to
Boulogne, was a brand-new chum. He seemed
to take a liking to us, and he was about as hard
to lose as a "cootie" after that.
Before long the two Billies fell asleep, but
Bonesey was a night-owl, and it was a long time
before he stopped talking and dropped off. As
for me, I was on the edge of the biggest adven-
ture a boy could ever hope to find, and I lay
thinking about it half the night, listening to the
guns and watching the rockets and the shells
against the black sky.

INTO THE BIG NOISE

In the morning the first thing I heard was the
voice of Billy Collins saying:
"I got some straw down my neck. I can't get
it out."
Then I discovered that I had a prickly feeling
myself, and began to dig for it. Ail around me
the lads were doing the same thing.
"Straw!" said the Sergeant. "Why, that ain't
straw you blighters have got. lt's cooties."
And he was right. We all had them--the
little crawlers that get into every soldier's clothes
as soon as he gets to the front, and stick to him
like a loving brother till he gets back to Blighty.
I wonder if Jim Hawkins had those things. I
hadn't counted on them when I went adventure
hunting.
Before the sun set that day I had gone into
the greatest bit of adventure a boy could ever
hope to find, for that afternoon we filed into the
trenches.
Frightened? Oh, I'll admit it. 5;0 was Billy
Collins. I'm not so sureabout Bonesey. He kept
his mouth shut and looked as serious as an under-
taker, and there was no telling how he felt. Billy
Matchett was the only one of us who didn't change
a bit, no matter how close the shells came. He
went in humming a tune.
We relieved the Black Watch, who had been
there for weeks, and who didn't like the place a
bit. They said it was one of the worst positions
on the front--the dirtiest trenches, the biggest

z2 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

rats, the liveliest cooties, and the hardest fight-
ing.
"I feel a bit sorry for you poor blokes," said
the big Black Watch trench-guide who took us in.
"After you've been in this blooming hole as long
as we have you'll be glad enough to get out.
Keep your heads down, you pop-eyed blighters,
if you don't want Fritzie to drill holes through
you."
Those Black Watch lads ruade me open my
eyes, I can tell you. Grimy they were, as if they
had been wallowing in mud for a year, and some
had scars from knives or bayonets or bullets across
their faces. Their regiment had been through
some of the hottest fighting of the war. Veterans,
every one of them, these lads, who had seen more
terrible things than I had ever dreamed of, who
had killed Germans by the hundreds, who had
had more wonderful escapes from death than they
could remember. .And here I was in their trenches
chumming with them--with the heroes I had
heard of so often--and one of a regiment corne
to take their places. It was a strange world,
sure enough. Anything might corne true affer
that.
Bonesey nudged me as we filed along.
"Say, Mascot," he whispered ; "l've seen 'ard-
lookin' blokes in my time, but never the like of
these. W'y, that big lad that's leadin' us 'asn't
'ad a bath in ten years, and, blimey, if I don't
believe 'e was a murderer before 'e joined the

INTO THE BIG NOISE

13

army from the looks of 'im. How'd you like to
meet a chap like that alone in a dark alley, now?"
Bonesey was a hard-looking blighter himself,
but he looked as sweet as an angel beside those
Black Watchers.
I hadn't been in the trenches half an hour
before I forgot my fear. I t seemed to be a fairly
safe place, after ail. Shells were flying overhead,
and now and then a bullet plunked into the
parapet, but hidden down there I didn't see any
pressing need for worry.
That's what I was thinking, when suddenly a
fine young lad jumped to the firing-step to get
a look at the Germans. He lifted head and
shoulders above the top, and looked over. Just
below him I stood staring up at him, wondering
at his recklessness. I saw him wave his cap, like
the poor, innocent rookie he was, and I heard a
sergeant roar at him to come down. He did corne
down, that very instant, falling backward almost
on top of me, with a bullet-hole in his head.
The sight turned me hall sick with fear and
horror. He was the first man I had ever seen
killed, and, though l've seen hundreds dead and
dying since that time, I shall never forget the way
he came tumbling down in a heap at my feet,
without a cry or a groan. ¥ou never forget the
first dead man; afterward there are too many to
remember.
The Black Watch went away to a well-earned
rest before long, and their trenches became ours.

14 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

But the lad who had led us in hung on for a time
to tell us a few more pleasant things about what
we might expect. The more he told us the
sadder we grew, and the sadder he saw us growing
the worse became his story of what we had come
tO.

CHAPTER III

In Dead Men's Alley

" Make your wills and say your prayers," said
the big Black Watcher, "for if any of you lads
get out of this hole alive you'll be lueky, I ean tell
you that. Dead Men's Alley we've named it, for
of all the blooming unlueky spots on the line this
bit of trench is the worst."
Maybe we weren't a nervous lot when we heard
that! Ow! I felt cold and shaky ail over.
Something happened a few minutes later that
didn't make me feel any better, I tan tell you.
There came a sound like a railroad train going
through a tunnel with the engine whistle going.
Then came a crash that seemed to shake the
whole trench, and not a hundred feet from where
I stood a black column of smoke shot up to the
sky. A shell had struek against our sand-bags.
When the smoke cleared away I saw a man's
body hanging over out wires and another lying
across the parapet. Soon the news ran along the
line that three others had been struck by pieces of
the shell and badly wounded.
15

6 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

A thing that seemed strange to us, who were
llew to the queer ways of shells, was that a lad
who had been standing only two yards from the
explosion was not hurt nor even knocked off his
feet, though a man close beside him had been
blown out of the trench and was one of those I
had seen lying dead.
For the first few hours after the Black Watch
chap and his regiment of grimy old veterans left
us it didn't take much to make us think the Ger-
mans were coming. Sometimes one of us would
believe he smelled gas, and we would grab for our
masks. If the German typewriters rattled a little
louder than usual, our of-ficers would imagine they
were getting ready for a raid and would call every
man of us to the firing-step. The first rime I got
there I round I couldn't reach to the top, so I got
a sand-bag and stood on it. That ruade me just
high enough to see over and shoot.
But the first Hun we saw came from another
direction than we expected. With a loud buzzing
noise he dropped down on us in his airplane right
out of the sky, and swooped along our trench hOt
a hundred feet above our heads, peppering us with
lead as he went. One man was killed not ten feet
from where I stood, and several more dropped not
very far away.
I had often wondered what it was going to be
like to be under tire, and had never once thought
that I shouldn't bave the nerve to face it. But
when I saw that lad fall dead almost at my side,

IN DEAD MEN'S ALLEY 7

while the shadow of that big, buzzing monster
was creeping along the trench, the old shaky feel-
ing got hold of me again, and I was as weak as a
baby. I crouched in the bottom of the trench, and
covered my eyes to shut out the sight of the hor-
rible thing overhead, and I thought of No. 15
Maria Street, and of what a sale, cosy, comfort-
able home it was. Oh, that little room of mine
at home, and ïrreasure [sland by candle-light!
I t was all over in a moment. The buzzing noise
died away, and the stretcher-bearers were coming
through the trench after the dead and wounded.
I got to my feet and looked about to make sure
nobody had noticed me. The men I saw were too
busy watching the sky to pay any attention to
what might be going on in the trench. I looked
up. There, far above us, the Hun was being
attacked by one of our own flyers.
They circled round and round each other, firing
ail the time, and then Fritzie broke away and flew
off as fast as he could go, our man giving him a
hot chase.
A big, black thunder-cloud was rolling from
the east, and Fritzie ruade for it. In a moment
they had both disappeared inside it. While we
watched for them we could hear the thunder
bellow and sec flashes of lightning. They had
gone right into the heart of the storm.
Then came a streak of lightning that blinded
us, and in the saine instant, out of the spot from
which the flash had corne, an airplane, disabled

18 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

and helpless, dropped as straight as a rock over
the German lines.
Whether it was our man or Fritzie we had no
way of knowing, but a moment later the other
plane came swooping out of the storm and circled
easily down behind our trenches. Then we knew
it was Fritzie who had lost the fight, and you
should have heard the cheers that our men sent
up. Even the Germans heard them far away in
their lines, and answered them with a terrific
rattling of their typewriters.
One of our sentries was killed a few minutes
later. I had a good look at him as they carried
him past us on a stretcher. He was a man I had
known at Oswestry, and he had been joking with
me only that morning. I had seen more than one
man die that day, but the sight of that lad that I
had known so well made death seem more dread-
ful than ever before. I had heard him speak of his
mother and sisters he had left at home, and I felt
like crying when I thought of them.
That night we crept into our dug-outs to sleep.
Next to me lay Billy Matchett.
"Well, Mascot," raid Billy, "here we are in
it at last; right into all that we've been dreaming
about. Seems queer, don't it? Begin to wish
you were back home, don't you now?"
" Not yet, Billy," I answered. " I want to see
the whole thing through. Then home will seem
like a good place to get back to for a while."
I meant every word of it, for the big adventure

1N DEAD MEN'S ALLEY 9

was only just beginning then; but if anybody had
asked me the same question a month or two later,
after we had been shot at and shelled and bombed
and gassed, and had slept in mud and rain along
the Flanders roads, I think I should have given a
different answer.

CHAPTER IV

The Colonel Gets a Warning

The Black Watcher had told us those were the
worst dug-outs he had ever been in. I don't
believe he exaggerated. They couldn't have
been worse. They were so small that only four
men could creep into one, and they were dirty
and smelly. If the four men happened to be big
chaps they had to sleep almost on top of one
another; but I was so small that there were really
only three and a half in ours, and, one of them
being Billy Matchett, who was long and narrow,
we had room to spare.
" Sleep tight, Mascot," said Billy. " No telling
how soon they'll call us out of this."
But how can a fellow sleep tight when a rat
runs over his face every rive minutes? I had no
more than dropped off when the first one came.
The feet of a rat are the most horrible, cold,
clammy things in the world, and when they pat-
tered right across my face I came wide awake
with a jump and a yell.
Up jumps Billy the saine moment.
20

THE COLONEL GETS A WARNING z

"Ow! I say, Mascot! I can't stand this, you
know. That thing was kissing me, that's what
he was."
" Oh, let him kiss you; what's the difference?"
somebody growls in the dark.
Ail four of us grumble and squirm a while;
then we drop off.
"Ow!" It's Billy's voice again. " I say!
That rat's corne back."
" Pull your coat over your face and shut up."
Billy and I took the hint, and slept till the Ser-
geant called us out.
That morning we heard that the Prussian Guard
had taken the places of the Saxons in the trenches
facing us, and that we might expect trouble.
Prussians always mean trouble. They're the best
fighters in the Kaiser's army--the best, the
meanest, the cruelest.
The Fritzies' artillery and typewriters were
much busier after the Prussians arrived, and out
lads on the firing-step didn't take any chances
in sticking their heads up any higher than they
had to.
A lad gets used to the typewriters and the
rifles, but oh, those big guns! They sent ail
kinds of stuff at us, but the whiz-bangs were the
worst. We called them that because of the way
they went with a whiz and a bang. A whiz-
bang does a plucky lot of damage when it strikes,
and very often they struck much too near to be
pleasant. It made me nervous watching them

22 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

and wondering how much would be left of me
if one should explode too close.
One of these things struck our cook-house,
smashed it to pieces, and killed every cook on
duty--five of them. Dinner was an hour late
that day. After that, whenever the food wasn't
up to the mark, some lad would be sure to say:
" l'm thinking it's about time we had some more
cooks killed."
Everybody had an idea that with all that firing
the Prussians were getting ready to raid us, and
to show us what kind of lads they were. But
there wasn't one of them to be seen ail day--not
even a helmet popping up. I know now why
they didn't come; they had another kind of a
game in mind.
We had ail heard, of course, of the miners--the
moles who spend ail their rime tunnelling deep
under No Man's Land with shovels and picks,
hoping to plant a charge of dynamite under the
enemy's trench. We had seen some of our own,
who would disappear into dark holes and be
gone for hours. A story spread along the line
that the Germans' miners were digging under-
neath us, and that we might expect to be blown
to the sky any minute. We didn't know whether
to believe it or not, but it wasn't good for our
nerves. As for me, I should rather have heard
the whole German army was coming at us than
to feel that we might be standing over a mine.
Along came Bonesey, looking glum as an owl.

THE COLONEL GETS A WARNING 2 3

"What's the trouble, Bonesey, old boy?" I
sung at him, trying to cheer him a bit. "¥ou're
not worrying about that mine?"
" Mine be blowed! If one goes off under me
l'Il never know it, so wot should I care? It's
this Scotland Yard lad that's on me nerves, little
man. When I joined the army I thought I was
goin' to be somewheres where the police wouldn't
be botherin' of me, but that lad's got 'is eye on
me hevery time I corne within sight of 'ira. Wot's
he think I'm up to now--'ousebreakin'?"
A Royal Welsh Fusilier, whose regiment held
the same line as ours, came along a moment
later, and began to tell us of what had been
going on before we arrived. He had been in
the war ever since it started, and he told us
things that made our eyes open. He told us
how the Huns tortured prisoners and women and
children, and of horrible things he had seen with
his own eyes. From what we heard from him,
and later from many others too, I knew that the
Huns had gone mad, the whole race of them, that
fighting them was just like fighting savages, and
that it might be better to be killed than to fall
alive into their hands. And I knew it not only
from what I heard, but from what before long
I saw myself; terrible things that sent cold
shivers through me and that I couldn't get out
of my thoughts. I would dream of them at night,
and sometimes I would wake up with a cry, think-
ing those fiends had corne to torture me.

24

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

" We old-timers don't take any prisoners," said
the Welshman. " Not after what we've seen.
After you've been in the trenches a month, my
boy, you'll find killing Huns is just like killing
vermin. You'll know the Lord is glad every
time you stick your bayonet into one."
l've heard stories of how the North American
Indians tortured people, but they were hOt as bad
as what I heard and saw in Flanders.
That Welshman had heard about the mine
too, and he told us it wouldn't surprise him if
the whole trench went up into the air belote
long. He said the talk about the mine had been
goig on for days, and that all the officers had
heard it, and had put out miners at work investi-
gating. The miners, he said, thought at first
that it might have been the rats that had started
the scare, and that the sound caused by their
scurrying about in the dark had been mistaken
for the scraping and shovelling of underground
Germans. But he thought they must have given
up that idea, because they were still searching
for a tunnel.
" But I'm telling you," he said, "that getting
blown up by a mine would be the pleasantest
sort of an end a Britisher could corne to in this
plaguey spot."
l've met more cheerful lads than that Welsh-
man. He was as solemn as a mourner at a
funeral, and he talked about nothing but trouble.
Five minutes with him would take the laugh out

THE COLONEL GETS A WARNING 25

of a laughing hyena. I felt glum for the rest of
the day. A mine right under my feet, as likely
as not, and a couple of hundred yards away the
worst fiends on earth waiting for a chance to
torture me. N ice place I had come to.
That evening came an order to withdraw to a
trench in the rear, and we knew the mine story
must be truc. We filed out through the com-
munication-trenches, leaving the sentries to keep
guard until we were gone.
Fifteen minutes later came a crash and a roar
that staggered me. The whole world seemed to
be blowing to pieces. Smoke and flame and
flying earth filled the whole sky. Then it came
again and again. Boom! boom! boom! It was
enough to burst our ear-drums--the most awful
noise I had ever heard. Then out of the great
black smoke-cloud the body of a man was tossed
a hundred feet into the air--one of our own men
who had stayed behind too long.
We learned later that our miners had discovered,
not ten minutes before the order came for us to
get out, that the Germans were ready to blow
us up, and word had been sent to the Colonel in
a hurry. I t's lucky the Colonel acted promptly.
The old boy could act as quick as lightning when
there was trouble in the wind.

CHAPTER V

The Germans Come

That cloud of smoke had scarcely disappeared
when the Germans opened up on us with every-
thing they had. Bullets and shells were flying
everywhere. The whiz-bangs tore gaps in our
wire fences and in our sand-bag parapet. Showers
of sand, earth, and pebbles fell over us and half-
blinded us. We lost some menmhow many I
don't know, but I saw two blown to pieces by
a shell that dropped right into the trench.
We four pals--Billy Collins, Billy Matchett,
Bonesey, and I--were squatting in the trench in
the dark, glad it wasn't our turn on the firing-
step in all that fuss, when along came that same
funeral-faced Welshman.
" I say, old 'Ard Luck," shouted Bonesey;
"wot's biting yer now?"
"That mine was there all right," croaked
We|shie. " Didn't I tell you? And I'm telling
you now that there's more trouble coming before
long."
As he spoke we heard somebody shouting
orders down the trench.

THE GERMANS COME

27

"Coming!" yelled Billy Collins. " It's here
now!" And he jumped to his feet.
The same instant came the gas-mask signal. I
grabbed for mine. My hands were shaking so that
I could hardly hold it, but there wasn't any time
to lose if I wanted to lire. As I fumbled with
it I kept mumbling to myself: " Fifteen seconds!
Fifteen seconds! One, two, three, fours"
According to instructions, fifteen seconds was
about the time allowed for a gas-wave to arrive,
and if that mask wasn't adjusted properly by
the time I had counted fifteen, then good-bye
to Tommy Kehoe.
I had got up to ten, and was still fumbling,
when Welshie grabbed me and put the thing in
place on my head. Then we both jumped for
the firing-step.
Not one hundred feet away a long, low fog-
bank was creeping toward us close to the ground.
It was the gas-wave. Our rockets were shooting
up through the dark, and in their glare the wave
turned yellow and red and green as it rolled on.
Behind it ail was pitch black. By the light of
the rockets I could look along our line of trench
and see our lads in helmets and masks, stiff as
statues, with their rit]es pointing over the parapet.
My mask was warm and stifling, and I felt like
pulling it off for a big breath of fresh air before
the wave should reach us, but I didn't dare. I
had heard of men who had taken such a chance
and who hadn't lived to tell of it.

-8 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

One moment the wave was sparkling whlte,
like phosphorescent surf on a sand-bar, the next
it gleamed green and red, like the deadly thing
it was. And it crept toward us, oh, so slowly!
Perhaps it was onl¥ ten seconds belote it rolled
over the sand-bags, but it seemed like ten times
as long.
Then it swept over us. I gasped for air. I
thought I was suffocating. I was sure there was
a hole in my mask somewhere, and that it was all
over with me. But it wasn't as bad as that. I
was hall stifled, but there was a lot of life left
in me, though the gas did get a few fellowsw
knocked them fiat.
There wasn't time to do any thinking about
the lack of air, for I saw something else rolling
toward us out there in the dark. Another gas-
wave, I thought. The fellows beside me were
firing into it as fast as they could pull the triggers,
and I got busy with my rifle, too. But why were
they shooting at a wave?
Then I saw what it wasmnot a gas-wave, but
a mass of charging men. And how they did
corne! It seemed only an instant before they
were in plain view--hundreds of hooded Huns,
rushing on with fixed bayonets.
What marks they were, all massed together,
with the rockets throwing a g]are over them!
We scarcely had to take aim. Our bullets were
sure to find them. I saw them fall, sometimes
groups of them going down together. The ma-

THE GERMANS COME 2 9
chine-guns were mowing lanes right through their
ranks. Yet they never once stopped. Again and
again the gaps in their ranks closed up. Always
came more men from over there in the dark to
take the places of the dead and wounded.
Not a hundred feet away they were when out
lads were jumping to the parapet to meet them
with their bayonets. I ruade a leap for the top
of the ladder, grabbed at it, missed, and slipped
back. Somebody reached out a hand and pulled
me up.
Almost on us they were. Oh, never in my
worst dreamsmand l've had many a bad one
since thenmhave I seen a more dreadful sight
than that. They came at us out of the dark like
fiends from another world, like the pictures l've
seen of men from Mars, for their heads were
covered with the most devilish-looking masks
that anybody could imagine, masks with huge
round eyes and long, piggish snouts. Shells were
bursting above them, machine-guns were tearing
through their ranks, and their masks were white
and ghastly in the light of the rockets. Many a
time I had thought of what war would be like,
but never had I thought I should look on such
a sight as that.
" Fight or die, Tommy Kehoe! Fight or die!"
That's what I told myself as I crouched in
front of the sand-bags, with my bayonet ready
for them.
Whopping big men they were, head and shoul-

30

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

ders above me. But as I waited there a thought
flashed through me of the Bantam regiment, little
fellows scarcely bigger than I, who had made
good against even those giant Prussians. Size
didn't count behind a bayonet. It was quickness
that counted. I was sure of it. If it didn't, then
it was ail over with me.
Even then, when they were almost up to us,
how the guns were mowing them down! It
looked as if none could be left in a moment or
two. But those that didn't fall came on like
madmen, and poured through the lanes where
the big guns had levelled our wires.
One--he was a six-footer if he was an inch--
ran straight for me with his bayonet out. I
crouched, and thrust at himwthrust upward.
His bayonet went over my shoulder. He stag-
gered, and fell over my gun.
I had got him! I had got him!
'Twas lucky for me there was no time to think
over it or to stand there gaping at the dead Hum
For a second or two I turned dizzy and sick.
But it was fight again or die. I jerked my rifle
back and stumbled.
" Buck up! Tommy Kehoe. Buck up!" I told
myself. "Size don't count."
A fellow was coming for me swinging his gun
above his head, ready to strike me with the butt.
He frightened me. I hadn't counted on that kind
of fighting. Just then somebody stuck him from
behind with a bayonet, and he fell.

THE GERMANS COME

31

There were more Huns coming, and I thought
it was ail up with us. But as I looked at them
again I saw that they were without their rifles,
and that they were holding their hands above
their heads. They were surrendering. The
fight was over.
Yes, it was over; but dead and wounded men
were ail about us, and we had lost many of our
own. I didn't recognize any of them as they lay
there, for they were masked, but later I found
that lads I had known were missing. There was
much work for the stretcher-bearers in front of
the trenches that night. Dangerous work it was,
too, for the Huns never stopped shooting at them.
Before long a wind sprang up that blew the
gas away, and we pulled off our masks, glad to
breathe the fresh air again. Oh, how good that
fresh wind was in our faces! We got together
in little groups and talked over the fight. One
lad named John Golder, from London, showed
us a steel breastplate he was wearing under his
uniform. He said his father had sent it to him,
hoping it would save his life.
"And it has saved it," Golder said. " Look
here."
He struck a match, and showed us a dent in
the breastplate close to his heart, and a little
above it he pointed out a scratch.
"The dent's where a bullet struck," he said.
" Knocked me fiat on my back, but that's ail the
harm it did, thanks to my old man at home.

3 2 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
And that scratch I got from a Boche bayonet.
The Hun tan at me and jabbed me hard. Must
bave thought I wasn't human when his bayonet
wouldn't go through. H e's out there near the
wires now, what's left of him. I got him."
"This workin' in the dark is wot suits me,"
said Bonesey. " I got three of the beggars, but
I'd 'ave 'ated to meet 'em by day. I never was
no good in the daytime."
From somewhere in the dark I heard, " Didn't
I tell you there was going to be trouble?" I
knew that voice. It belonged to that funeral-
faced Welshie.
"No need of tellin' us, old 'Ard Luck," sung
out Bonesey. "There's always trouble comin'
when you're about."
" Cheero!" said Billy Matchett. " It's all over."
And he sat down in the bottom of the trench and
sa.Ilg •
"Are we downhearted? No !
Not while Britannia rules the waves! Not likely!
While we've Jack upon the sea and Tommy on the shore
We needn't fret.
It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But we're not downhearted yet."
"Corne and sing, Mascot," he said, "and forget
about trouble for a little."
I sat down beside him in the dark, and we sang
together "The Ship that's Bound for Blighty",
" Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue", and "Take Me
Back to Dear Old Blighty", and for a time I

976

,:

HE STAGGERED AND FELL OVER MV GUN

THE GERMANS COME

33

forgot about the bloody work we had had that
night.
Some of the lads came along and croucbed
down beside us to listen. When we had finished,
old Bonesey pulled me up and pounded me on
the back.
" I'm thinkin' the Mascot ruade good," he said.
"The bloomin' little shaver got one--got 'im
square 'e did! Ain't 'e the cute little beggar
FIOW ?"
Bonesey always did have a good word to put
in for me. But I didn't need it that night. I
had killed my first German, and I was as puffed
up with pride over it as a lad who's just got his
V.C.

CHAPTER VI

The Lost Patrol

Billy Collins was a great lad for dreams. Once
he dreamed that a German officer was lying in
the bottom of a shell-hole near our wires with a
wounded leg. And, so help me, it was the truth.
The German was found there the night after
Billy told about it.
I was never much of a believer in dreams and
things like that myself, but the lads in the trenches
get to believe almost anything, so many queer
things happen there, and l've more faith in
dreams than I once had. l've known them to
corne true many a time. Two of Billy Collins's
did--the one about the German and another
about himself.
" Mascot," he said to me one morning as he
crawled out of his dug-out, " I had a bad one
last night."
"About what?" said I.
"About being out between the lines," answered
Billy. "Ow! It makes me shiver yet. It was
this way. They sent me out in the dark with a
patrol. That is, in my dream they did. The

THE LOST PATROL 35
first thing we knew we had walked right into a
party of Germans three times as big as our own.
They were all around us, and we couldn't get
away. And they came at us with the bayonets."
"And what happened to you?" I asked.
" I don't know a blooming thing more about
what happened," said Billy. "That's the end of
the dream."
And that same day they picked Billy Collins as
one of a party to go out on patrol.
That night he and fifteen other lads went out.
I saw them go. Just before they climbed up over
the sand-bags Billy came up to me and shook me
by the hand. A fine young fellow he was, ail
smiles and jokes as a rule, but he looked as solemn
as an owl just then.
"Good-bye, Mascot," he said. "And if I
shouldn't come back write a letter home for me."
Standing on the firing-step, I put my head over
the top and watched them go out. I could see
them until they had passed through the lanes
between our wires and a little beyond; then the
darkness swallowed them up. I wondered whether
I should ever see Billy Collins again.
"Of course he'll come back," I told myself.
"That dream has got on his nerves. But there's
no sense in dreams, and, anyway, he didn't dream
he was killed."
Then I turned in for some sleep.
I t was daylight when I woke up, and the big
guns were booming, as they almost always were.

36

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

" Did our patrol get back ail right?" I asked
of a sergeant.
"Still out," he answered. "Something gone
wrong, perhaps, or they may be lying safe out in
shell-holes or in the wood over yonder."
The morning passed, and they hadn't returned.
But we didn't give up hope, because patrols had
been known to stay out two or three days and
corne back safe. By the time it grew dark our
officers'decided that something must have hap-
pened to the patrol. There came a call for volun-
teers to go out and search for them.
In the party were Bonesey and I and eight
others. It was dangerous work, because the sky
was clear, there was no fog, and the moon was
due in less than an hour. It was dark enough to
hide us from the German trenches, but if the moon
should corne up in a clear sky we should have to
come back in a hurry, and more than likely the
Boches would drop us on the way.
I t was rough going, because almost every square
yard of the ground had been churned up by shells.
Sometimes we sank to our ankles, and, as the
earth was sticky, it was hard to pull our feet out.
Whenever the Germans sent up a light we
dropped fiat on the ground and lay there till it
grew dark again.
We had been prowling about for perhaps fifteen
minutes, when Bonesey dropped to the ground
and pulled me down beside him.
" Boches!" he whispered.

THE LOST PATROL

37

The beggar's ears were as sharp as a bird
0 -
do, s.
" I can't hear anything," I said.
"Whisht! Listen!" whispered Bonesey.
The test of the patrol had followed our ex-
ample, and were lying fiat, too. We lay still for
a full minute. Then I heard voices. They
seemed to be drawing nearer. The men, who-
ever they were, were speaking very softly, but
now and then we could hear their footsteps and
the rattling of their guns.
" Perhaps they are our own men," I said.
" Don't be fooling of yourself, little boy," an-
swered Bonesey. "Didn't I 'ear 'em talking?
And don't I know their bloomin' language when
I 'ears it?"
The next moment I saw them. They were
coming straight towards us. I counted them.
Twenty-two! We were outnumbered more than
two to one. If they saw us we were as good as
done for. Oh, what beautiful marks they were!
We could have drawn a line on eight of them
and missed not one. That would have left four-
teen, and we might have got a few more before
they would begin shooting. But then what would
happen? As soon as they. heard the firing, the
Germans in the trenches would open upon us
with their star-lights and guns and wipe us out.
It's never safe to tire a gun in No Man's Land.
The patrol came closer. I almost stopped
breathing, thinking every second that they would

38 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
sec us. For a moment one of them stood so near
to me that I could have reached out and almost
touched him. I don't think I breathed at ail
while he stood there. I thought he must hear
my heart pounding against my ribs, for it was
going like a trip-hammer. But he passed on,
and, after a few moments, I heard Bonesey
whisper:
"They're gone. 131ind me eyes! l've 'ad
close squeezes, Mascot, but never one like that."
I jumped up and gasped for air. I was shaking
all over."
We waited, listening, a little while; then we
moved on. After a few minutes of prowling
about we decided we should bave to go back, or
the moon would catch us. We had just turned
toward our own trench when we came across a
body. It was one of the men in the missing
patrol. There was a bayonet-hole through him.
We searched over the ground near where he lay
and found six more of them, all dead. The others
we couldn't find, and we were sure they must bave
been taken prisoners. I saw one of our lads
bending over one of the bodies. He looked up,
and turned to me.
"Give a hand, Mascot," he said, "and we'll
carry him in. It's Billy Collins."
It was hard going, and all we could do to get
across the rough ground with the bodies, but we
knew we had to move fast. Once I looked over
my shoulder, and what I saw gave me a scare.

THE LOST PATROL

39

Over the German trenches the sky was growing
bright.
Suddenly a glow of light fell over us. The
moon was up. The Germans would surely get
sight of us in a moment. Just then we came up
against the wiresJour own wires--and in another
minute we were safe.
The next day the postman brought a letter and
a package for Billy Collins. The letter was from
his girl, for I knew her writingma pretty girl in
Liverpool whom he had hoped to marry some
day. There was a package for me, too, from my
mother. Inside were some things to eat and a
mouth-organ. I played the mouth-organ, and
Billy Matchett sang a song, while we tried to
forget about what had happened to Billy Collins.
But I couldn't forget that the poor lad had
asked me to write to his people at home. I'm a
bad hand at writing, but I got out a pencil and
paper and did the best I could. I got as far as
"You will be sorry to hear that 13illy is dead ",
and there I stuck. I couldn't think of another
word to say that would do any good. After a lot
of thinking I made up my mind to add that the
Boches drove a bayonet through him, but Bonesey
told me not to.
"You got to write only wot's cheerful and con-
soling," he said. "Say, "E died like a 'ero,
fighting for hold England '."
So I did, and let it go at that.
" Now," said Bonesey, " I'm thinking that I
( e 976 ) 4

40 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
should be doing some writing myself. The close
squeeze I'ad last night has set me thinking that
I may get killed before this war is over, and my
will's not ruade."
He pulled out his pay-book, for there is a blank
place left in them for the lads to make their wills,
and began to write.
" Didn't know you had a family, Bonesey," I
said.
" Nota soul belonging to me in this world," he
answered.
"Then what's the good of making a wi|l?"
"There might be a few shillings of back pay
comin' to me," he said, "and there's a few little
things l've left back in London." "Who's going to get it ?"
"A girl, Mascot. She's the daughter of a lad
that was once a pal of mine. Shot by me side,
'e was, while we was doing a little job of 'ouse-
breaking one night, l've looked after 'er since
she wasn't much more than knee 'igh to me, and
many's the night l've taken chances with the
bobbies to get swag enough for 'er proper
schoolin'. She's full-grown now, and able to
look after 'erself, but she 'asn't forgotten old
Bonesey, not she!
"When we marched off for the war about
every blighter in the company 'ad somebody
corne to see 'im off and wish 'ira well. And I
says to myself, 'I'm the only bloke in the lot
that's got nobody to say good-bye to.'

THE LOST PATROL

4!

" But, so 'elp me, the next minute I gets me
eyes on that little lassie, corne hall the way from
London to give me a cheer. Blimey, if it didn't
make me feel good!
"She'll get the back shillings coming to me,
Mascot, and w'atever else l've got, for she's the
only bloomin' soul on earth wot will drop a tear
for Bonesey when 'e's planted under the daisies."
A shell ploughed into the sand-bags, and the
shock almost sent the pad out of his hands; but
he held on toit and began to write his will.

CHAPTER VII

Ghosts of the Night

Night sentry-go is an ugly, creepy job. My
first try at it was the longest night l've ever put
in. Afterward it wasn't so bad.
" So that mascot of ours is going to guard us
to-night," said Billy Matchett, who thought he
was a great joker, because before he joined the
army he got his living in the music-halls in that
way and with his singing. "That means the
Boches will get us sure. The kid's scarce old
enough to keep awake in the daytime, let alone
at night."
Then he and big Tom Brannigan got busy
stretching the joke along till I felt like giving
them a feel of my bayonet. Red-headed Murphy
joined in with them, too, and he was worse than
either of them, for he never knew when to stop;
but I saw him killed on the road to Arras a
month later, and I can forgive him for all the
fun he got out of me.
Sentry-go was two hours on and two hours off
ail night. I hadn't slept well the night before,
for the cooties and the rats had been after

GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT

43

me hard, but up there alone on the firing-step
I felt so important that I forgot ail about being
sleepy. I got to thinking of all the sleeping
soldiers I was guarding from danger, and of how
the lives of all of them might hang on how well
I did the job, in case the Huns should creep up in
the dark. And I said to myself:
" It's quite a job for a sixteen-year-old lad,
Tommy Kehoe, and you should be proud of
yourself. There's many a friend of yours at
home in Liverpool that would like to be in your
shoes to-night."
Sometimes it grew so quiet that I could hear
our men talking together in low voices in the
dug-outs. One voice was shrill and squeaky,
and I knew it belonged to Windy Bullen,
who was always talking about the cooties and
rats he had killed. He was a proud lad when-
ever he killed a cootie that was different from
the rest.
"The blighter!" I heard him squeaking; "if it
wasn't pink with green eyes! And he chewed
clean through me bloomin' hide! "
Then the artillery would begin again or a
machine-gun would break loose. Every few
minutes a star-light would go up from the Ger-
mans' trenches, and, oh! it was a lovely sight
as it sent a soft glow over all the ugly shell-
holes. It was like watching fireworks at home
on a holiday, only the air smelled better at
home.

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

When my legs grew stiff from standing still
looking over the sand-bags, I marched back and
forward along the firing-step. A guard can do
that, but it's none too safe, for you never know
when the Germans will get busy. I had heard
of a night-guard who was taking a little walk
to stretch his legs, when a I-Iun crept up and
knocked him on the head just as he ruade the
turn in his beat, and I couldn't help thinking that
the same thing might happen to me.
Two hours of it brought my lay-off, and I got
a little sleep till the Sergeant rapped me up with a
biff on the sole of my foot. Then back again to
the firing-step. Nothing to do but stand there
looking over the sand-bags, wondering whether
a sniper would get me. More likely it would be
a machine-gun, for it was too black for snipers.
A sniper is a wonder when the moon is up or the
stars bright and the air clear, but dark nights put
him out of business, and I felt lucky for that.
Snipers or no, a guard bas to keep his helmet
over the top more or less.
Except when the star-lights went up, I could
see just about as far as our wires.
The worst thing about night sentry-go is the
trouble a lad has keeping awake. If you go to
sleep and the Sergeant catches you--ow! They
could shoot a man for doing that, and no matter
how lucky he may be, he never gets off easy.
But I couldn't help getting sleepy. I tried to
keep awake by walking, but as soon as I would

GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT

45

come back to my perch I would begin to nod
again. And then I dropped off.
I didn't know anything more till I heard a low
whistle. That brought me wideawake with a
jump. I had been standing up, leaning against
my gun, but I may have been snoring for all I
knew. It gave nie an awful scare. For a second
I didn't know whether the whistle had corne from
the Sergeant or a German, but either way would
have been bad enough. I thought I was done
for. Then from somewhere down in the trench
came a whisper:
" Whisht! Wake up, Mascot!"
Soit wasn't either the Sergeant or a Hun, and
I was safe. I kept wideawake after that.
There's something about night sentry-go that
stirs up a lad's imagination till everything about
him is like a dream, and mostly like a bad dream,
too. The Irish boys from Liverpool are always
seeing ghosts in the dark. Brannigan used to see
a headless soldier walking up and down in front
of the trench, and he would watch the thing until
cold shivers ran through him. He saw the head-
less soldier coming for him in a raid once, and it
was the only time Iever saw Big Tom afraid.
He came near getting shot by his officer for
starting to run back to our trench. And one day
a little later, when a Hun whose head had just
been blown off tumbled right on top of him in
a shell-hole, he let out a yell that we could hear
above the artillery.

4 6 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
That first night on guard I saw something
myself that I know now couldn't bave been true,
but that I couldn't get out of my mind for days
and days afterward. As I was staring over the
top a rocket went up from the Germans, and sent
a broad path of light from their trench almost to
ours. Right in the centre of that lighted way I
saw somebody coming toward me. It was a
woman with her arms stretched out, as if she
were pleading. The light was shining full on ber
face, and I saw it was my mother.
I thought I heard ber calling "Tommy, lad!
Tommy, lad! "
But the artillery was going just then, and I
knew I couldn't bave heard ber voice at that
distance.
Then the light went out, and she disappeared in
the dark.
I believed that night that I really had seen her,
and I wondered whether she was groping about
for me out there in the dark. Then I began to
be afraid. I thought my mother might be dead,
and that this was her ghost come to find me. It
was terrible to think of ber moving about there
among ail those dead men; but it seemed just as
bad to bave her creeping toward me out of the
dark. Ghosts are ghosts, and I didn't care to
meet with one alone in the night, even my
mother's.
A week later I got a letter from her that told
me she was as well as ever.

GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT 47
I t wasn't death or the dead soldiers that fright-
ened the Tommies; it was those dead soldiers'
ghosts.
I remember that, after Charlie Tapper was
killed, his pal, McGuire, couldn't sleep nights for
fear Charlie would corne back and haunt him.
And one night Charlie's ghost did corne.
McGuire was in his dug-out writing a letter
home. He felt a puff of cold air on his face,
and, looking up, he saw Charlie, who didn't seem
tobe ruade of anything much but white fog,
coming in through the door.
" Mac," says the ghost, " I can't rest easy till
I get a plug of tobacco. Could you spare your
old matey a cut of it?"
Mac spilled the ink ail over the paper and
buried his head in a blanket. When at last he
got up nerve enough to peek out, Charlie was
gone, and Mac never forgave himself for hOt
passing over the plug.
Thinking over those things up there against
the parapet made me nervous. I thought I saw
a dead German move his arms, and it made me
jump. Then a rocker went up, and I got a look
at his face, and he looked as if he might be asleep,
dreaming of his home.
"Well, Fritzie," I told him, " I shouldn't won-
der if that's how it will corne to ail of us--with a
dream of home."
Then I thought of my own home, and imagined
I could see my mother looking out of the window

4 8

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

to the pier's head where the ships corne in, and
wondering when I was coming back.
"Tommy, lad," I said to myself, "if ever I get
back there again that's where l'Il stay. It's too
full of dead men's ghosts out here.

CHAPTER VIII

Heroes and Cowards

¥ou may think a man a coward when he's not;
you may think another is brave when he's not.
l've found that it's only in the trenches that you
find out much about a man that's more than skin
deep.
"There's many a lad that's no good that looks
good and seems good," our Chaplain, Father
O'Brien, told me. "And there's many a lad
who's all white inside without you ever thinking
it. A man's got to do more than say his prayers
to prove he's a Christian."
One night a party went out on patrol, and one
of them was Windy Dick, who had fainted when
he heard the artillery as we marched to Ypres.
"Better say your prayers, Windy," somebody
called to him. "That's a bad job you're on. The
Boches will get you, like as not."
Windy didn't make any answer to that. The
lads had been making fun of him ever since the
day he dropped in the road, and he had learned
that it only made them worse to talk back. He
went up over the top with the test of the party,

50 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
alç! that was the last we saw of him till after dark
the next evening. The patrol had got back long
before that without him, and it was an even bet
whether Windy had been shot or scared to
death.
We had about made up our minds we were
never going to see him again, when three men
hove in sight out of the dark beyond the wires.
One was driving the other two along at the end
of his bayonet, and was ripping out a curse at
them with every step.
"Blimey if it isn't Windy Dick!" cried Bone-
sey. "Has me eyesight gone wrong, or am I
dreaming ?"
That was who it was, too; Windy with two
prisoners, and his chest was sticking out like a
pigeon's with pride.
"l've been lying out in a shell-hole ail day with
these two blokes waiting for dark before bringing
them in," he said. "They've been whining
'kamerad' at me three times a minute for fifteen
hours thereabouts, and l've been tickling them with
the bayonet every time they said it."
"¥ou're not meaning to tell us you got that
pair ail by your little self?" said Big Tom.
"I did," answered Windy, "which is more
than you've done. And don't you be calling me
Windy any more, either."
The lads thought Windy must have gone
balmy. Not only had he taken two prisoners all
by himself, but he was a changed lad. There

HEROES AND COWARDS 51

wasn't anything meek and timid about the way he
carried himself now.
The next day he told me what had happened.
Somehow in the dark he had got separated from
the patrol, and while wandering about alone trying
to find them he had caught sight of the two Huns.
H e had been so scared when he went out with
the patrol that he made up his mind he was going
to be killed sure, and when he saw the Huns he
thought his time had corne to go west. That idea
put some ginger into him, and he said to himself
that if he'd got to die he might as well pass out
fighting. So he sailed into the Huns, who didn't
see him coming, and who were so taken by sur-
prise when they saw his bayonet under their noses
that they threw up their hands.
Windy wandered about with the two Boches
till sunrise, for he had lost his bearings, and was
afraid of getting into the German trench by mis-
take. When it grew light he made sure which
way to go, and dropped with the Boches into the
shell-hole to wait for dark, when walking wouldn't
be sure death.
After that there wasn't a better fighter in the
company than Windy Dick, who had been
scared into being brave.
One of the bravest men of the war was in our
regiment. He was James Proctor, of Liverpool.
He brought in twenty-four wounded men one at
a time on his shoulders from in front of the German
guns, and won the Victoria Cross.

5 2 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
I wasn't there when that was done, but the lads
were ail talking about it, and one of them, Michael
O'Grady, of A Company, said he was going to
win the Victoria Cross, too, or die trying for it.
"I'm going over to the Boches' trench to drop
a bomb," he told Sergeant Griffiths.
It was a bright night, with the snipers busy,
and the Sergeant warned him that he would be
killed.
"I don't care," answered O'Grady. "I want to
earn something."
He crept up over the top, and began crawling
toward the Germans. The Sergeant thought he
would be killed before he had gone ten yards, but
although the bullets began to fly, none of them
struck him. He had crawled to within a few feet
of the Germans' first line when he was killed.
Another brave man was "Red" Bullen, who
was brave because he had got the notion into his
head that he couldn't be killed.
"l've been through more tight places than any
man in the company," Red would say, "without
a scratch to show for it. If l'd been slated to die
I'd have been buried long ago. Look at this.
lt's what saves me. I can't be killed so long as
l've got this about me."
Then he would pull out a little cross a French
girl had given him, and that he wore hanging from
a string around his neck. She had told him it
would save him from being shot as long as he
wore it.

HEROES AND COWARDS 53
One day he and three other men were together
behind the lines when a shell exploded where
they were standing. Red was knocked down, but
he jumped up and found that he was unhurt,
except for some gravel in his eyes. Then he saw
that the three men who had been standing beside
him had all been killed. After that he was more
certain than ever that the cross would save him.
No matter how fast the bullets came, Red didn't
care.
"They can't get me," he would say. "I needn't
woFry."
And then one day a bullet did get him.
"He must bave lost his cross," said Big Tom,
who was superstitious, and believed in things like
that.
And, so help me! he had lost it. It wasn't on
his body, and the string round his neck was
broken.
"Don't tell me there's nothing in luck pieces,"
said Big Tom. "And yet l've known 'em to fail.
A man I knew in B Company had a bead a girl
had given him, and he always wore it next his
skin, thinking it would save him. But he was
killed the first day he was in the front line. How
can you account for that now ? The way I see it
is that some of these luck pieces are lucky and
some are unlucky, and there's never any telling
which is which. ¥ou've just got to wear 'em and
take a chance."
But I never could see it that way myself. If

54 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
a lad has to take a chance with them he might as
well take a chance without them. I never wore
one, and here I am alive.
Speaking of brave men, there were none braver
than the Gurkhas, who fought side by side with us
in those Ypres trenches. They had brought with
them from lndia their big knives, curved like
mowing-sickles, and sharpened on the concave
edge, and they used them more often than the
bayonet. They would swing them around just as
if they were mowing grass. Of all the men in our
line, the Germans dreaded those black Gurkhas
the most.
Sometimes we would steal the Gurkhas' shirts,
but they were a good-natured lot so long as we
didn't go too far with our jokes. But if anybody
went past the limit with them he was sure to be
in trouble, for the Gurkha is a bad man to have
dealings with when he's angry.
Whenever they set out for the German trenches
the Gurkhas never stopped, no matter how thick
the bullets were flying. Ad, oh! how Fritzie
hated to see them coming! With those big knives
of theirs they could clean out a German trench
quicker than any men I ever saw.
We had many lads of our own as brave as any
Gurkha that ever lived, but we had cowards, too,
and that's more than the Gurkhas had. I learned
a thing or two from those men who were afraid.
I found that they were just as likely to get killed as
the men who were brave. Ad I said to myself,

HEROES AND COWARDS 55
"What's the use of being a coward when it
doesn't even save your life?"
Most of them were born cowards, and they
never got over it, no matter how much fighting
they went through. One of them came up to me
one day and held up his trigger finger.
"Shoot it off for me, will you, Mascot ?" he said.
"I want to go back to Blighty.
I wouldn't doit, but he kept on asking till he
found somebody who did the job for him. I cou|d
count a dozen such men who tried to lose the
trigger finger to get out of the war. And I knew
another who wanted to lose a finger but who
hadn't the nerve. Every day he would talk about
it, but when somebody would offer to shoot it off
he would change his mind. That poor chap was
a|ways afraid, and even after he had been weeks
in the trenches he would jump every time a shell
came near.
Then came a night when he had to go over the
top in a raid. He was shaking so much he could
scarcely climb out of the trench. HaILway across
No Man's Land he got a bullet in the back, and
it was said afterward that it was one of our own
officers who shot him because he was running
away.
Better to be a brave man than a coward, and
just as safe--perhaps a little safer. That's the
lesson I learned from such men as he.

(c 97ê ) 5

CHAPTER IX

"Hard Luck" Prophesies again

" Blind me eyes! If 'ere isn't old 'Ard Luck
back again! Wot's going to 'appen to us now ?"
It was old Bonesey, giving a welcome to the
funeral-faced lad from the Fusiliers. We hadn't
seen Welshie for some time, but he hadn't changed.
He was the saine old cheer-killer.
"Now, I'm telling you there's trouble on the
way," Welshie began as soon as he had joined us.
"There's always trouble, with you about,"
growled Bonesey. "Wot's the gay word you've
brought now ?"
"Just set your eyes on that sky," said Welshie.
" l'm telling you we're in for bad weather, and
you'll know what that means after we've had a few
days of it. It rains something awful in this God-
forgotten land when it does rain, and I'm telling
you it's on the way. There'll be good swimming
in these trenches before it's over."
Welshie should have been in the Government
weather-office. People would always know when
storms were coming then. Only there'd be noth-
ing else but storms.

"HARD LUCK" PROPHESIES AGAIN 57

It came just as that cheerful lad had predicted.
That evening it began to rain. It rained all night
hard. The water came into our dug-outs and
soaked us through and through. No chance of
dry clothes to change to. When we got wet we
stayed wet. While we slept we oozed with water
and mud. The rats splashed about beside us,
spattering us now and then running over us. A
dry rat feels bad enough on a lad's face, but a wet
one---ow! I squirmed all the rest of the night
after feeling one.
In the morning we got some tea, dog-biscuits
and bully-beef, but we couldn't get the mud out
our mess-tins, and it got mixed up with the food.
There was only one thing to console us: the guns
weren't so busy as usual. Sometimes an hour
would pass without a sound but the rain and the
curses of the soldiers. Now and then the artillery
would loosen up a little, and the shells sent the
mud spouting up in big, brown geysers. A shell
struck only a few feet away from us, and the mud-
storm that went up from the hole it made came
down ail over us. I thought before that happened
that we were as muddy as we could be, but we
were a lot worse afterward.
" I say, Mascot," B ilIy Matchett called to me as
he tried to wipe the mud out of his eyes. "What
did you ever get into this blinkin' war for ? You
didn't have to."
"To get a bit of adventure, Billy," I answered.
"And I'm getting it--more than I wanted. Those

5 8 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
old pirates I used to read about were better off
than we. They didn't have mud like this where
they were, or if they did the book-writers forgot
to mention it."
" When this war is over," said Billy, " I'll look
for my adventures down on the tropic islands, if I
need any more. l've had enough of this country."
The trenches were filling up fast. The pumps
worked steadily, but the water came in faster than
they could send it out. By the end of that day it
was up to my waist. _And, oh, it was cold! I
almost froze. I t wouldn't bave been so bad if I
had known I was going to have a dry place to
creep into at night to sleep, but there was no hope
of that. We knew we should have to stay where
we were, shivering and with our teeth chattering,
until the rain stopped and the sun came out, and
there was no telling when that would be.
"The water's spoiled ail my fags," moaned
Billy. " I'd give ail the back pay coming to me
for a smoke."
Most of the lads were in the same fix, and not
having any cigarettes made them sadder than ever,
for a Tommy doesn't think lire is worth living when
he can't smoke. There was no singing in the
trench that day; even Billy had lost his voice,
and it wasn't often he was without a song to cheer
us with.
Nothing but growls and curses, and the swish,
swish, swish of the rain. Up on the firing-step
the sentries, with the water running from their

"HARD LUCK" PROPHESIES AGAIN 59

helmets, were staring over the top, but they
couldn't see anything but the rain. There didn't
seem to be much need of their being there, for
the Germans weren't going to attack in such
weather. The fight must have been taken all out
of those Huns, as it was out of us.
And yet one of them did come--just onem
through ail that rain and mud. But he hadn't
corne to fight. He came wallowing through the
mud and water like a half-drowned rat, with his
hands above lais head, and crying, " Kamerad!
Kamerad !"
The sentries let him pass, and as he jumped into
the trench the splash he sent up half blinded us.
" How did you get here?" asked the Sergeant,
when Fritzie had come to the surface and had
blown the water out of his mouth.
"Ach! Mein Gott!" cried Fritzie. "I svimmed
here."
Then he told how, when nobody was looking, he
had climbed out of his own trench, which he said
was in even worse shape than ours, and had
crawled over the sand-bags into the mud. In ail
the rain the German sentries didn't notice him, but
for the first few yards he was af raid to stand up,
and crawled through the mud, where sometimes he
sank so deep that he thought he was lost. Once
he fell into a shell-hole, and sank in mud and
water to his neck. He thought he would never
get out of that hole, but he managed it at last.
Then he lost his way, and splashed about for

60 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

hours. At iast he came up against our wires, but
he didn't know whether they were ours or the
Germans'. He lay there listening, and after a time
heard somebody calling in English.
He told us he had had enough of fighting, and
had been trying to get away for weeks. He had
been told that the British tortured their prisoners;
but long belote the war he had been a waiter in a
London hotel, and had learned so much about the
British, then, that he didn't believe what he had
heard about us in the trenches.
That night the dug-outs were too full of water
to sleep in, and we stayed in the trenches. Oh,
what a night ! Rain, tain, tain ! It never stoppe&
And all night long the cold, muddy water half
covered us. Some of the men dropped asleep
standing up. Sometimes one of them would lose
his balance, fall over into the water with a big
splash, and disappear. Then he would corne
floundering up from the bottom with the sleep all
washed out of him, and mad as a hatter. That
happened to Billy Matchett once, and when I saw
him coming up from under the water blowing, and
puffing, I thought of the worrying he had done on
out first day at the front about how he was going
to get his regular daily bath, for he had been a
natty chap back in Liverpool. We had just gone
into the first-line trench, when he asked of a Black
Watcher :
"Tell me, old top, how do we get our morning
tub ?"

"HARD LUCK" PROPHESIES AGAIN 6

"You gets it when it rains," said the Black
Watcher. "And then you gets it good."
For an hour or two after he heard that Billy
lost all interest in trench lire. He had been talk-
ing about baths and dreaming about them ever
since. And now that he was getting a good one
he was no more satisfied than he had been before.
We thought the lads out on "night ops"
between the lines were lucky for once, for they
didn't have to spend the night in water, and could
move about and get warm. But when they came
back, just before daylight, we round they hadn't
been so lucky after all. We were a hard-looking
lot ourselves by that time, and they looked even
worse than we.
They had been on the go all night in mud so
deep and sticky that every step was hard work.
Sometimes they had sunk in it to their knees.
They were covered all over with it, and we
couldn't recognize our best friends among them.
They told us they had spent the worst night of
their lives, and that there wasn't one of them who
hadn't fallen into a shell-hole, where he went out
of sight in the mud. Once they had been so close
to the enemy trench that they heard what the
Boches were saying, and they had stayed to listen
to some of Fritzie's sad songs. The Boches will
sing, no matter how unhappy they may be, but
when things go wrong their songs are about as
cheerful as a funeral march.
About noon that day the rain stopped, and

62 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

before long the sun came out. But that didn't
help matters much, because the water and mud
in the trench were as bad as ever. At last the
pumps got the water out, but a good part of the
sun-baked mud stuck to us as long as we were up
in front.

CHAPTER X

"Give 'em the Bayonet!"

A big push was coming. We ail knew it,
though how is more than I can say. For days
the word had been going about that we were
going to get after Fritzie hard, and send him back
a little nearer to where he came from.
" I t's about time," growled Big Tom, "that
this blinkin' lot of blighters got another naine
than the 'Scruffy Fifth', and here's our chance
to get it if we're going after them bloomin' Boches
at last."
The Scruffy Fifth we were called because we
were so grimy, but it wasn't through any fault
of ours. How could we be anything else but
scruffy when we hadn't been able to wash our
faces since we got to the trenches? l'd have bet
my pay that a lot of others who gave us that
name were no cleaner than we. I never could
understand why they picked us out for that title
when the whole army should have had it, if any-
body. But we had got it, and there wasn't a lad
among us who didn't make up his mind, when he
heard the big push was coming, that the Scruffy

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

Fifth would win a better name, if we all had to
die for it.
One evening the word was passed around that
we were going over the top some time before
morning, and before long we were told that the
time was set for midnight sharp.
I had heard enough from the old-timers to
know what that meant. It meant that a lot of
us would be killed, and a lot more wounded. I
couldn't help feeling nervous and jumpy. A
good deal worse I should have felt, too, if I
hadn't killed that big Hun in the raid, but that
put heart into me, and ruade me sure that, even
though I was only a ninety-six pounder, I was
going to have an even chance with those six-
footers from Prussia.
" Go for 'em, Tommy!" I kept saying to myself.
"Go for 'em! Dodge under their bayonets, and
get 'em from below."
We spent a lot of time cleaning our guns and
making sure our bayonets were in good shape,
and the bombers filled their haversacks with
enough stuff to blow up the whole German line.
Twenty minutes before midnight every man
of us was ready and waiting. Those minutes
of waiting were the hardest part of all that night's
work, for it was only then that we had any time
to think, and worry, and wonder what was going
to happen to us. And that littIe bit of time
dragged along as if it were hours. I never knew
the men to be so quiet; no talking, no laughing,

"GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET!" 65

no singing. If we had been old-timers it wouldn't
have mattered, and we should have been as cheer-
fui as ever, but a lad does a lot of hard thinking
just before his first time over the top.
Twelve o'clock came. Up we went and over.
I t was a black night, but dozens of rockets
were going up, and the way lay clear before us.
Our wire-cutters had cut wide lanes in our fences
for us, and we crowded through them. The
artillery and the machine-guns were going like
mad. The bullets were singing ail around us.
Some of our men fell. One toppled over right
in front of me, so close that I had to run over
him. If he was dead it didn't matter, and if
wounded, I doubt if my ninety-six pounds hurt him
much.
A shell whizzed along just above us. I felt
the wind from it. It was so close that it lifted
the caps from some of the men's heads.
Once I stumbled and fell. For a moment I
lay there feeling myself ail over, wondering if
I had been hit. When I had ruade sure I was
all right I jumped up and tan on. By that rime
the men were well ahead of me. As I tried to
catch up a shell burst among them, and I saw
some bodies flying into the air.
Then the way began to be fiIled with dead and
wounded. Some of the wounded were dragging
themselves over the ground, trying to get into
shell-holes or back to out trenches. I passed a
man who was kneeling by the side of a dying lad

66 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

whose legs had been blown off. The man on his
knees was our chaplain. I heard him praying as
I went by. A brave man was Father O'Brien--
brave and good, and careless of his own lire when
there were wounded lads who needed him. He
had gone over the top with the first of us ; though
I have known of many a chaplain who would never
do that, and who would wait for the wounded to
be brought to him behind the lines.
Over to the right a big tank--the first I had
ever seen in action--was bobbing along toward
the German line. It broke through the wires
as if they had been no more than cobwebs, and
came to a stop right over the Germans' first
trench, with all its guns spouting.
I was almost there now, and I saw our lads
piling in on top of the Huns. Ow! How the¥
did pile in on them! Even the artillery couldn't
drown the chorus of yells and groans that came
up from that tangle of fighters. It was like a
whole menagerie of starved wild-cats let loose.
I didn't think of anything then but of jumping
into the fight. There wasn't time to be afraid.
As I reached the trench I came up in front of
a big H un, who was standing on the parapet
with his gun raised over his head and his bayonet
pointing down at me.
I ducked my head and went for him. I'd have
been a goner if I hadn't. It was my only chance.
His bayonet must have slid over me just as m¥
own got him. He threw up his arms, his gun

"GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET!" 6 7

came tumbling over me, and he went down on
his knees, while his bod¥ slowl¥ crumpled up
into a heap.
It's queer what thoughts sometimes corne into
a chap's mind at such moments. As I jabbed
him the words of that Welsh Fusilier tan through
my head: "You'll know the Lord is glad ever¥
time you stick your ba¥onet into a Hun".
And I did know it. I knew the Lord was fight-
ing on out side, as Father O'Brien had told us,
and that I was doing His work.
A good many of out men had jumped clear
over that first trench and had gone on to the
next, but when I ruade the leap I landed in the
bottom in a heap. It isn't easy to make a long
jump with a rifle in your hands, unless you're long
in the legs, and I'm hOt.
When I got to my feet I saw a German coming
for me. I jumped back a foot or two just as he
ruade a lunge for me with his bayonet, and he
missed me b¥ an inch. He was going at me
again, when one of out lads brought the butt of
a gun down on his head and knocked him cold.
About twenty feet away there were some more
Germans, but before I had to worry about them
a bomber did the trick for the whole lot. There
were six of them. The bomb killed three, and
the others couldn't have lived very long.
B¥ that time the first trench was fairly well
cleaned out. The only Germans left in it were
dead or wounded, except the prisoners, and there

68

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

were a lot of them. Fritzie will fight hard until
he sees the game is up, and then he doesn't lose
any time in throwing up his hands and crying
" Kamerad!"
It was while I was watching those prisoners that
I learned what a tricky, savage beast Fritzie can
be. There was one among them who managed
to get his hand into his coat, and from it he
pulled out a bomb. He was about to throw it
into a group of our men when somebody ran
him through with a bayonet. The bomb dropped
to the ground. It didn't explode, and the man
who had killed him picked it up and threw it
over the top. It burst with an awful crash a few
yards away, but no one was hurt.
After that I climbed up to see what had become
of the lads who had gone on to the second trench.
There was a lot of fighting going on over there.
and I decided to make a run for it and take a
hand in the fuss, for my fighting blood was up
by that time, and I wasn't thinking of danger.
I went, and luck was with me, for, though the
artillery and the typewriters were showering ail
the ground that lay between, I wasn't touched.
Perhaps it was because I was so much smaller
than the rest and harder to hit. I have often
thought there was something in that notion, for
it always seemed to me there were more big men
killed than little ones.
I was almost across to the second trench, when
I saw a lad from our company crawling toward

"GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET!" 6 9

me, wounded. I stopped, thinking I should help
him.
"Go on, kid, and fight," he cried. " It's only
a broken leg."
So I left him and ran on.
It was the liveliest kind of a fight that I jumped
into. Our lads and the Huns were all mixed
up together, clubbing, bayoneting, and shooting,
while our bombers were cleaning out the dug-outs
fast.
I killed another Hun in that trench. It was
easy, for I caught him on my bayonet while he
was going at somebody else, and he didn't see
me coming. That ruade two for me--fairly good
for a lad of my size, I thought--but I didn't get
a chance at another, though we captured a third
trench before the fighting was over.
By the time we got that third trench we liked
the fighting so much that we didn't want to stop,
and we might have gone on to Berlin if our
officers had let us. That was the place I wanted
to get to, and I thought I should see it some day.
I wanted a chance to shake my fist in the Kaiser's
face, and perhaps to run a prince along at the end
of my bayonet.
But the fighting was over for that day, though
there was much work to be done--running the
prisoners back to the rear, patching up the
trenches we had won, and putting up parapets--
and we were a tired lot when night came. We
got some sleep then.

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

But out on the shell-pitted ground we had
crossed there was no sleep for the stretcher-
bearers. Four hundred and fifty of our dead and
wounded lay out there in the dark, and many a
fine lad I had known among them.
Yes, the finest of all was among them--our
chaplain, dead beside a dying rifleman. They
found him on his knees, and they thought at
first that he was praying. The tears came to
my eyes when I heard that he was gone, for he
had been a good friend to me, and there wasn't
a man among us who didn't love him. Many a
rime after that I thought of him, and sometimes
when I was feeling home-sick, or when the tains
and the mud and the hard marching were taking
the heart out of me, it seemed to me I heard his
voice speaking to me, telling me to be brave and
have faith in God.

CHAPTER XI

It's the Fighting Fifth

Good-bye, old Scruffy Fifth! It's the Fighting
Fifth now. Ask any British soldier who was at
Y'pres in the sunamer of 917 what they called
the Liverpool Fifth Battalion. Ask a London
Scottie or a Welsh Fusilier; ask the Bantams or
the Gurkhas, for they were all there, and any one
of them will answer: "The Fighting Fifth is their
name, and they've earned it."
From the night we took the three German
trenches at the loss of so many of our men we
began to hear that new name, and it wasn't many
days before we were known by it everywhere.
And I can tell you I was proud of it. I belonged
to the Fighting Fifth, and the old fighters in
the lines would bave to forget that they had
called me "the Scruffies' mascot". We ail went
about with our chests sticking out, as if every one
of us had won the V.C., and we no longer envied
even the Black Watch, famous though they were,
and heroes of many battles.
" It's about time, I'm thinking," said Big Tom,
"that, since we're the Scruffies no more, they
(o 97 ) 7! 6

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

should send us back where we can get a little
water to wash our faces with, to say nothing of
washing ail over."
We had been in the front trenches a month,
and I know my own face hadn't been washed in
ail that time, except in the muddy water that we
wallowed in when it rained, for clean water was
too scarce to use for washing. But at last we
were told that we were going back to rest billets,
and that every one of us was going to have a
bath. It made us all happy except Bonesey.
" Blimey!" he grumbled. " I don't know as" I
take to this hidea of a bath, it's so long since
l've 'ad one. I t'll give me a cold or worse.
Wot's the use of washin' us? We're ail right as
we are, and most of us blokes weren't the bathin'
kind at any time. There's that old blighter in
A Company that was a tramp before the war,
and that would rather sit up on the sand-bags for
the snipers to shoot at than get scrubbed. 'E'll
desert to the Germans if this bloomin' bath is
forced on Ira.
But Billy Matchett almost fainted with joy
when he heard the news. Back in Liverpool
he had never gone without his morning tub, and
he had been ashamed to keep company with him-
self ever since he got to the front.
We needed that rest, for we had lost a lot of
sleep in the trenches, and had fought and worked
hard. There had been two days when we got
along on nothing but tea and biscuit, for something

IT'S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 73
--I never learned just what the trouble was--
had gone wrong with the food supply, and at
the best of times the food hadn't been anything
to brag about. We had shivered in the wet for
days together. We had put up with cooties
and rats, and the German artillery had been
hammering at us day and night. We were fed
up with front-trench life, when at last the order
came that sent us back to the rear.
A grimier lot of lads never came out of a coal-
r0ine than we were when we went marching back
to out base, rive miles away. Our clothes were
ragged, most of the men hadn't shaved in more
than a month, and almost all of them had a tired,
half-wild look in their eyes. No wonder the girls
we passed wouldn't give us so much as a smile,
and that the children ran away from us. But we
didn't care. We were the Fighting Fifth.
Back at the base we got all cleaned up in no
time, even Bonesey--baths, new clothes, shaves,
though I didn't have to trouble about the shaving
part of it, not being old enough to grow whiskers.
I wished those girls we had passed could have
seen us rhen. We would have shown them what
a fine-looking lot the Fighting Fifth could be.
It was an easy, cushy life back at the base--
nothing to do but lie about most of the rime and
talk and play "house" and "brag ". Those are
the two card gaines the soldiers play.
Poor old Bonesey did love the cards, and we
hadn't been back at the base two days when he

74

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

had lost his pay playing "house", besides a
German helmet and a lot of other relics he had
brought from the front. Even his fags he lost,
and he had to borrow smokes to keep him going
to the next pay-day.
For hours at a time we lay out in the sun
talking over all we had been through and what
each of us had done in the big raid on the
Germans. Bonesey had killed ten men, so he
said, but I think he must have counted wrong,
for some of the lads who had been fighting close
to him said he killed only one and wounded
another. But Big Tom had killed six, and had
witnesses to prove it. I don't know how many
Billy got. He was a brave lad, but wasn't given
to bragging.
We had a theatre back at the base, and Billy
was one of the singers. Some famous singers
and players came over from England to enter-
tain us. Harry Lauder was one of them, and
the lads gave him a great welcome. Life in
those dirty old front trenches seemed like a bad
dream while we were having ail those good times.
When it rained we crept into dug-outs or
shacks or houses, but in fair weather we were
out under the sky day and night. At night,
lying in our blankets on the ground, we watched
the shells and rockets shooting up into the sky,
and were glad we were out of ail that danger for
a while. We could lie there, clean and quiet and
peaceful, and watch the stars twinkle while we

IT'S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 75
thought about out people at home and of how
good it would be to get back there.
All kinds of people we met at these rest billets
--Belgian women and children who had been
driven frorn their hornes by the Gerrnans, old
Frenchmen who had been in the Franco-Prussian
War, and rnen in out own arrny who had served
for rnany years and had fought in many lands.
There was Sergeant Doyle, of our own regi-
ment, who had fought in India and with Kitch-
ener in the Soudan, and who had many a tale to
tell of what he had been through. A very dif-
ferent kind of fighting it had been frorn what we
knew in Belgiurn; fighting with never a trench
nor dug-out, tank nor gas; fighting with the arrny
on the move all the tirne, and with the cavalry
playing as big a part as the infantry. It all
seerned as strange to us lads as the old days of
the knights in arrnour, yet Sergeant Doyle was
the younger side of fifty, and it couldn't bave been
so very many years ago. I suppose that when
I ara a grey-headed gaffer the way we fought in
Belgiurn will seem as strange to the young soldiers
as the way Sergeant Doyle fought in the Soudan
did to us.
And there was Fogarty, who had fought against
the Mad Mullah in Somaliland and against the
savages in South Africa, and who had wounds to
show for it. Once he and a few other men had
been surrounded on the desert by more than two
hundred of the Mad Mullah's soldiers.

76 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
"We dropped into a hollow," Fogarty told us,
as we lay out in a field one night under the stars,
"and though there were only twelve of us, we
ruade it so hot for those Arabs that they didn't
dare come near. But they were on all sides of
us, and we couldn't get away. Ail day we lay
there, and the heat was fit to kill. Then the
night came down, but there wasn't a chance to
sneak off in the dark, for the lines were drawn
too close around us. We might hold them off,
for they weren't too eager to lose a lot of men
by rushing us, but it was the fear of thirst that
worried us the most. Our water bottles were
almost empty, and we didn't dare take another
drink. Our throats were so dry we couldn't speak
above a whisper. And then morning came, and
the sun came up, scorching hot, and the thirst
drove us almost mad. Some of the men could
stand it no longer, and drained their bottles dry,
but the rest of us kept what few drops we had
and only moistened our lips, not knowing how
long we might be there. Before that day was
over two of the men who had drained their bottles
went crazy, and were for going out and fighting
their way through the Arabs alone. We had to
hold them back, and they fought us with their
fists till the strength was all gone out of them.
We knew we couldn't stand another day of it, and
how we kept our senses through the night I don't
know. The next day broke, and we thought it
was our last. And then, just as the sun came up

IT'S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 77
over the sand, we caught sight of a column of
British soldiers coming toward us, and we knew
we were saved."
Another night a Frenchman with one arm--he
was out of the war for good then--told us how he
had fought in the Battle of the Marne and of the
vision that his regiment had seen. Not one of
us knew more than a few words of French, but he
could speak English as well as anybody, for he
had lived for years in London.
" I t was at the end of that great day when we
turned the Boches back from their drive on Paris,"
he told us. " The greatest day of the war it was,
for the city was only a few mlles away, and the
whole world thought the Iaiser was going to
get it. But we drove his big army back, weak
though we were. That evening there came a
blaze of light over in the northern sky, and above
it, among the clouds, we saw Joan of Arc, on a
white horse, leading her army. ¥ou may doubt
it, but I tell you I saw it with my own eyes, and
so did thousands of others, and to-day the story
is told all over France. There can bave been no
doubt of what we saw; it was seen by too many
to leave any question. If only I myself had seen
it I might bave thought I had been dreaming,
but the whole regiment told the same story, and
I saw many men fall down on their knees as they
stared at it, while others cheered, as if they took
it as a sign from Heaven that France would be
saved."

78

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

The Tommies blew out a lot of cigarette
smoke as he finished that story, and they said
not a word. It was a queer one, l'll adroit, and
hard to swallow; but I heard it later in France
from many a soldier who had fought at the
Marne.

CHAPTER XII

The Mad Woman of Ypres

We thought we had learned in the trenches
what a bad lot the Boches were, but affer we had
been back at the base a few days we knew far
worse things about them. lV[any a story we
heard of the black things they had done that
made us feel like going out and trying to wipe
out the whole bloody army of them, if we had
to die for it.
It had been a fine country around Ypres, full
of lovely gardens and splendid houses, before the
Huns got there, but the gardens were ruined
now, and so were the big homes they belonged
tO.
One day Billy, Bonesey, and I were out for a
stroll, when we came to a big château. At the
foot of the road that led up to it stood a lodge
which had been battered by shells and was fall-
ing to pieces. Inside the gare in what was left
of a great flower-garden were rows and rows of
little wooden crosses that marked the graves of
soldiers. The château, like the lodge, was half
ruined. Every window in it was broken, and
shells had torn great holes through the roof.

80 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

We went inside, and there we saw what a
wreck the Huns had made of ail the expensive
furnishings. They had slashed the tapestries on
the walls, chopped chairs and tables to pieces,
broken mirrors, and used their knives on the
woodwork without any other reason than love
of mutilating things. Even the fine piano they
had hacked to pieces.
We were looking about at ail this ruin, and
Billy was talking loudly of what devils the Boches
were, when an old man stepped up and spoke to
us. He was a wrinkled, white-haired, stoop-
shouldered old fellow, and his voice was not much
more than a whisper. He spoke in broken Eng-
lish, with a lot of French words mixed in, but
Billy knew a little French, and we managed to
understand what he was saying.
He told us that for fifty years he had been a
servant of the family that owned the château.
When the Germans were coming through Bel-
gium the family had hurried over into France
just in time to escape, but the old man had said,
"No; I shall not go. This has been my home
always, and I shall live and die here."
Then his two grandsons--only boys they were,
younger than I--said they would stay with their
grandfather, no matter what might happen.
The H uns came, and the old man tried to keep
them out of the château, telling them it had been
left in his care, and he must protect it, but while
he pleaded with them a soldier knocked him

THE MAD VOMAN OF YPRES 8

down with his gun. The blow made him uncon-
scious for a while. When he came to life again
he found that he had been dragged out into
the garden, and was lying there alone on the
ground.
After lying there some time, he managed to
get to his feet, and began to look about for his
grandsons. He couldn't find them. At last he
learned that the Germans had brought some
charge against them, and had marched them
away to be shot. He wouldn't believe it until
he found some persons who had seen them killed,
and who told him everything. And they were
not the only young boys the Germans killed on
the charge of being spies or of firing on the
soldiers.
"Some day," the old man said, "the master
and his family will corne back, and the old châ-
teau will be made over; but I may not live to
see that time. But I mean to live long enough
to see the Boches beaten and punished. I know
you will fight hard and win, you Britishers. It is
the Lord's work you are doing."
More stories as dreadful as that old man's
we heard as we went about over the country.
Women who had lost their husbands and chil-
dren told them to us. Children told them to us
who had lost their fathers and mothers. And,
oh, what hate their eyes showed as they spoke
of the Boches!
At one time, while we were speaking with a

82 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

group of children and trying to teach them some
of the good old English songs, a woman came
up and questioned them one by one. It was
always the same question:
" Have you seen my little Mimi?"
And the children would always shake their
heads.
A tall, fine-looking woman she was, with sad
eyes and a sort voice. After she had questioned
them all, she stood a moment staring at me,
then at Bonesey, then at Billy, without saying
another word. And then she began to cry very
softly, and walked away.
" lt's the mad woman," one of the children
told us; and we learned how the Huns had killed
her little Mimi, leaving the mother all alone in
the world, for her husband had fallen while fight-
ing for his country.
Hearing such dreadful things ruade us so sad
and gloomy that we were glad to get back to
where the Tommies could cheer us with their
jokes and their singing. Often I would lie awake
at night long after the other lads had fallen asleep,
and think over the stories I had heard, and won-
der whether savages had ever been worse than
those German devils that were trying to wipe us
out. I made up my mind to kill as man), of them
as I could, and never to try to take a prisoner.
And I told myself, too, that I should rather be
killed than be taken prisoner by them. There
are some kind Huns, I suppose, just as there are

THE MAD WOMAN OF YPRES 83
kind savages, but I had heard of some of our
soldiers who had fallen into the hands of the bad
ones, and who had been tortured.
Glad we were when we could forget now and
then the mad country we were in and all the
mad things that were being done there, and bring
our thoughts back to the good old days in Eng-
land. It was good to hear old Bonesey tell stories
of his housebreaking and of how he would man-
age to fool the bobbies. He didn't always fool
them, for he had been caught and sent to prison
several times, but he must bave been a clever lad
in his line, if half of what he told us was true.
I asked Martin, the Scotland Yard man, about
him one day, and he said:
" Yes, your friend Bonesey is a hard un, and
some day, when the war's over, I may bave to
send him to prison myself. But I hope hot.
He's been too good a soldier. Better reform him,
Mascot, while you've the chance."
I did try to reform Bonesey, but it wasn't any
use.
"Wot! Me be honest!" he would say, as he
winked one eye at Billy. "Why, bless yer
bloomin' 'eart, Mascot, I don't know wot hein'
honest is. Back to the 'ousebreakin' trade I'm
goin' when the war's over. But I'd sort of like
to get a V.C. meantimes. With that on me it
would sort of make me seem respectable in my
line of work."
" Don't you be trying to change a high-class

84 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
burglar into sornething he's hOt fitted for," put
in Billy. "Every man to his trade is what I say,
if he's good at it. There's chaplains I know of
that are such cowards they stay behind the lines
and wait for the dying soldiers to be brought
back belote they'll pray over them. And there's
a lad I know who was only a beggar in the streets
of Liverpool belote the war, yet he's as brave as
the best of them when it cornes to bringin in
the wounded from out in front. It's hOt what
a man is outside, or what he calls himself; it's
what he is inside that counts. Iust remem-
"Aw, shut up with the preachin'," grumbled
Bonesey. " It's an actor you are, Billy iatchett,
and I'm tellin' yer now you're no account at the
preachin'. A jail-bird the Mascot 'ere would be
if he listened to you, for you're so mixed up with
wot you're tryin' to say that you'd 'ave him be-
lievin' a burlar's honest and an honest man's a
burglar. Every man to his trade, and an actor
to 'is, is wot I'm thinkin'."

CHAPTER XIII

Soldiers Three

Because a tin rooster hung over the door, Billy
called it Chanticleer Tavern; but it had a French
naine that I never could pronounce. The wine
they sold there was just to Billy's taste, and, as
there was good food too, he and I were often in
the Chanticleer together of an evening. It was
there that we met the red-headed tanker, and his
friends, the one-eared sniper and the fat miner.
They all three came in together one night and
sat down at out table. Being a chummy lot, they
were soon telling us of some of the things they
had been through. I thought I had had a bit
of adventure myself since coming to the front,
but it was nothing to what those three lads had
seen.
"I was in a tank at the Somme, where we gave
the Boches the surprise of their lives," said the
red-headed one, and he dipped a finger in his
beer and drew wet lines on the table to show how
the trenches had lain.
"Over here," he said, as he daubed with his
finger, "were the Boches, and over there were
85

86 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

we, and here was the river. The artillery had
been pounding the Boches hard, and there was
nothing much left of their front trenches, but
their fences were still up, and our infantry might
have been shot to pieces before they could get
through them.
"'Twas then they sent us tankers into the
fight. Along we rattled, swaying and bumping
and rolling, with the bullets buzzing against our
old steel shell and making not so much as a dent.
And behind came the infantry, with us protecting
them. We got to those wire fences, and we went
through them without so much as a pause, and
the infantry poured in after through the big lanes
we ruade.
"The ground was all full of shell-holes, but
we never stopped. We would drop into a crater,
and climb out again, and into another and up
again, and though the old tank 'most bumped the
skin off of us, she never got a puncture, She
was afraid of nothing. Right up to a machine-
gun she'd crawl, and look at it, and b|aze away
at the gunners, then squash right over it.
"Of a sudden came a bump that sent us
sprawling against her insides and raised welts
all over us. She had tumbled into a crater as
big as a volcano's, and we thought for a second
she was done for. But she righted herself as easy
as if she was a jumping kangaroo, and went
purring along as fresh and sound as ever.
"Ail along the line the other tanks were going

SOLDIERS THREE 87
ahead, through wires and over shell-holes and
through big craters, just as we were, mowing the
Boches down by hundreds. Nothing could stop
them. The infantry swept along with them, fight-
ing like devils, and we ail had the Huns scared
blue. I t was a great victory we won that day,
as you lads have doubtless heard before.
" But maybe it wasn't hot inside that old tank!
One hundred degrees and more, if it was any-
thing at ail. Stripped to the waist we were, and
some of us stark naked, and the sweat was run-
ning off us in streams. And every time she
bumped into a hole we would go bumping against
her insides, till we were scratched and bruised and
black and blue ail over.
"And maybe the army didn't cheer us when
we got back! Oh, for a few minutes we lads
were the heroes. You should have heard the
regiments yell when they caught sight of us, all
bruised and black and grease-smeared as we
were."
"That's all well enough," spoke up the fat man,
"but l've been through more myself."
He had eyes as round and sharp as a bird's,
that lad, and a neck like a bull's.
" l've been through more myself," he said,
"and l'Il lay my pay that l've done for more
Huns than ever did that blinkin' tank of yours.
There was once we planted a string of mines that
blew up a whole German front line.
"There was another time when, as we were

88 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

burrowing out under No Man's Land, we heard
the Huns scratching away close to us digging a
tunnel of their own. We broke the head of out
shaft into theirs, and there we were face to face
with 'em in the dark. It was dark enough with
the lights going, but they were put out, and then
it was black as ink. We groped for those Huns
down there under the ground, where we couldn't
see out hands before out faces, and we fought 'ena
with out picks. And sometimes we fought them
with out bare hands.
"I bumped into a man, and I didn't know
whether he was friend or foe till l'd taken him
by the throat and then had loosened lais pipe
a second to let him yell. When I heard him I
knew he was Boche, and I tightened up his pipe
again till he went limp in my hands.
"Then the lights went up once more, and we
could see just enough to tell which were Boches
and which were out own. We cleaned out their
shaft without a shot fired, and the H uns over in
the trench never knew what was happening.
And we got back to out own line sale and sound,
except three lads the Boches had killed while we
were fighting in the dark."
The one-eared lad put his elbows on the table
and asked Billy for a fag. He was as thin as the
miner was fat, and the one ear that he had left
stuck out so straight that he had a funny, lop-
sided look.
" Now, I'm not sayin' my two pals here haven't

SOLDIERS THREE 89
done a few things in this bloomin' war," he said,
as he struck a match, "but it's only once in weeks
they get a chance at the Boches, while I'm the lad
that's gettin' 'em ail the time. Snipin' is my job,
and l've got upwards of two hundred Huns to my
credit by now.
"One day I lay out in a clump of grass behind
our line when a new German regiment had corne
up to the front. A green, careless lot they were,
and it was little they knew about us snipers.
Never have I had easier pickings than those
lads. Every few minutes one of 'em would be
sure to show himself a couple of inches or so
above the top, and if he was there more than a
second I'd be fairly sure to get him. I kept
count, and it was twenty-three men that dropped
to my gun that day.
"There was a hole in their parapet where old-
timers would have known enough to bend down
as they passed it, but it took a long time for those
new lads to learn that much. I'd keep my blinkers
on that spot, and every few minutes a head would
pass by and I'd let goat it. I got a dozen in
that one place."
" But it's little good you snipers are when it
cornes to takin' trenches," put in the red-headed
tanker. "And you lie ail day behind the line in
your clump of grass, and run no bloomin' danger
at all to speak of. And you have it cool and easy,
while we tankers are sweatin' and skinnin' our
hides against the iron."

9o

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

" And are you tryin' to tell me we run no dan-
ger?" growled the sniper, putting his hand over
the place where his ear was missing. " Where's
that bloomin' ear of mine gone? Tell me that
now. It was shot off by a Boche sniper, that's
what it was. And when they find out where we
are, their machine-guns pepper us, and we're lucky
if we get away with our lires. Danger! lt's
little a tanker knows about danger, stuck away
sale inside his shell, where the bullets can't get
him."
That's the way they were giving it to one
another, back and fortll, when there came a crash
that sent the chairs from under us and sent us
sprawling on the floor. The whole building
rocked with it, and I thought the walls were
coming down. We ran out, and round that a
shell had exploded a few feet outside the door.
Just as we got outside another struck close by.
We must have broken some running records for
the next minute.

CHAPTER XIV

Up to the trel'ches again we wel't when we had
beel' two weeks il test billets. They were not
the saine trenches we had left, for the whole line
had been pushing forward while we were resting.
Fritzie had been getting a hard pounding day
after day, and he must bave been sorry more
than once that he started that war.
Part of out new trench tan into a wood, which
was a black, creepy-looking place at night. There
had been more than one hot fight in that gloomy
spot, and many men had been killed there. The
trees were all torn by shell-fire, and many of them
were no more than stripped, dead trunks, sticking
up like poles. I didn't like that wood. It looked
so dismal that it took the heart out of me every
time I set my eyes on it. I never looked at it
that l didn't think of all the lads that had fallen
there, and of those that had lain for hours wounded
and suffering under the trees. It's strange what
a difference the bright sunshine makes. If it
hadn't been for those trees and the dark shadows

92

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

they cast, I shouldn't have thought half so much
about ail the terrible things that had happened on
that bit of ground.
As for the trench, it was about as bad as the
ont we had been in before, and we knew that
if it rained we should be wallowing in mud
again.
" I hear some of the Huns have pianos, and
electric lamps, and arm-chairs, and nice cement
floors and walls in their trencb.es," said Big Tom.
" How'd you like to be one of them Huns?
Never any mud; and when you want to have a
little rest and a smoke there's a nice plush-
covered easy chair for you with a footstool in
front of it. And when you're feeling blue you
go and play a little piece on the piano. Wish we
could find a trench like that. l'm thinkin' the
l "
Boches wouldn't keep it ong.
We thought Big Tom was joking, but later we
met men who had captured cement-lined trenches,
and who had seen officers' dug-outs so grand that
a prince would think he was back home in his
palace.
" I wonder if there are any rats in this new
hole they've brought us to," said Billy.
He found out when he crept into his dug-out
for the night. The rats were there all right.
And so was the mud. The lads that built that
trench hadn't taken any lessons from the Huns
with the pianos.
Fritzie gave us a warm welcome by sending

BOMBS 93

over a lot of trench-mortar bombs, along with
other presents, such as whiz-bangs, pip-squeaks,
and minniewurfers. They always had been gener-
ous with gifts of that sort, but they were more
free-handed than usual v«hen we arrived. I sup-
pose they wanted to make sure we knew they
were there.
The trench mortar would go off with a big
click, so we knew the bomb was coming a second
or two before it reached us. When we heard the
click we would dive for the dug-outs. We heard
the click the very first day in the trench, and I
and two other lads tumbled into a dug-out that
was right behind us so fast that we sprawled over
one another. Then we heard the bomb hit the
ground with a thud. About a second later it went
off. We heard the timbers crashing around us,
and the whole dug-out went to pieces. I thought
that ended the war for us. We were buried under
earth and timbers, and everything went black.
I was a bit surprised when I discovered I
wasn't dead. I couldn't more, and there must
have been a ton of stuff on top of me, but I
could breathe, and I didn't feel any pain. In a
few minutes they dug us out, and the three of us
were as sound as ever, except for a few scratches
and a lot of dirt in our eyes and mouths.
" It's well for the Fighting Fifth that they
didn't kill our mascot," said Billy. "Our luck
would have been spoiled for the rest of the
war."

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

" No need to worry," put in Big Tom. "We'd
get another mascot soon enough. Anything will
do for a mascot--a cat, a dog, or any old thing;
it don't matter so long as we've got one. And
one kind's as lucky as another."
I t wasn't long before Fritzie got a lesson from
us about how to use bombs. One day a man
named Edwards, who came from near my home
in Liverpool, where I had known him well, and
who had fought in South Africa, said he thought
we had stood about enough from the Germans,
and that he was going to take some of the fresh-
ness out of them.
That evening he went over the top alone with
a load of bombs. It was fairly dark, and there
was a mist hanging close to the ground, so the
Germans didn't see him coming. I-le crawled up
to their trench, pulled out his wire-cutter, ruade
a hole in their fence, and went through. The
Germans didn't get sight of him till he jumped
right in on top of them. He had a bomb in his
hand, and when he struck the bottom of the
trench he held it up so they could all see it, and
said, loud enough for them to hear:
"Hands up, or I'll give you this to whack
amongst you!"
I don't know whether they understood what he
said, they being nothing but Germans, but they
saw the bomb ail right, and they knew what was
going to happen if their hands didn't go up. So
up their hands went.

BOMBS q5

He managed to bring every one of those Huns
back with him to our line--sixteen of them.
He missed the honour that was coming to him,
for he was killed the next day, but his widow got
the Military Medal for what he had done.

CHAPTER XV

Groping in the Dark

A few days later a patrol-party was being ruade
up, and I wanted to be in it. The Sergeant
wouldn't take me at first, saying I was too young
for such work, but he changed his mind later, and
I went along.
There were fifteen of us, and every one in the
lot was glad of the chance. We waited till some
rime after dark, and then we stole out. It couldn't
have been a better night for a patrol, for it was as
black as inklno moon, no stars, and a thick fog
that hung dose to the ground. We couldn't see
three feet in front of us, and the Huns didn't have
a chance of seeing us. Close together we kept,
for we had to. We would never have round one
another again if we had got separated. The
Sergeant had a compass--an illuminated one that
shone in the dark--and that showed us the way.
We made straight for the Germans' line, for the
Sergeant had a plan for dropping a few bombs
into their trench. He kept count of his steps,
measuring the distance as well as he could, and
when he thought we must be close to their wires
we all got down and crawled.

¢ 976

VVE GOT SIGHT OF A GERMAN G_'ARD LOOK|N(; OVER THE TOP

GROPING IN THE DARK 97

Just then a star-shell went up that sent a blaze
of light through the fog. The fence was so close
that we could bave reached out and touched it.
And right in front of us we got sight of a German
guard looking over the top. We heard him give
a surprised grunt, and we knew he had seen us.
The next second his gun went off, and one of out
men gave a groan and rolled over dead. Maybe
we didn't do sorne fast crawling after that!
" Keep down!" out Sergeant whispered. "Drop
into the first shell-hole you find."
The Huns' typewriters were going, and we
could hear the bullets singing over out heads.
Then a star-shell went up, and we stopped till the
light went out. We had crawled a few yards, and
were beginning to think the worst was over, when
we heard the thud of a bomb hitting the ground
close by'. I could hear rny heart beat as I waited
for the crash. I rnight have tried running, but I
didn't know where the thing lay, whether in front
of us or behind, and it was about as sale to lie
still as to take a chance of diving right into it.
It must have been fairly close, for the crash
lifted me right up from the ground a foot or two.
I carne down with a bump that knocked the breath
out of me, and the flying earth came down over
me in a shower.
I expected another one to corne any second, and
I crawled off as fast as I could. After a minute I
stopped and listened, but there wasn't a sound but
the typewriters.

8 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

" I'm lost!" I told myself. "Where's the
blooming Sergeant and his compass?"
I didn't know north, south, east, nor west.
There wasn't anything to do but keep on crawling
and trust to luck, and for ail I knew I might bave
to crawl around in No Man's Land ail night, and
find myself out there for the Germans to shoot in
a nice clear sunrise.
After a few minutes I found a shell-hole, and
dropped into it. It wasn't a very big one, but
good enough for night-time. I lay there awhile,
thinking hard. There were several things I
thought of doing. I could stay where I was, get
my bearings when the sun came up, lie there ail
day, and crawl over to our trench after dark. But
that would mean a whole day without food and
with hOt much water, and the shell-hole wasn't
any too big for day-time. Or I could crawl about
till I found a bigger shell-hole, and try the same
plan there. But if I should do that there was
danger of getting up against the German wires
and being seen again.
"Oh, keep on crawling," I said to myself, "and
take a chance. I'm as likely to get killed one way
as another."
So I crawled about till the clothes were almost
worn off me, and after a time the machine-guns
weren't so noisy, and I got to my feet and walked.
I must have been walking for at least an hour,
and going around in circles, I suppose, for I hadn't
corne to either the Huns' line or ours, when I

GROPING IN THE DARK

99

bumped square into a man. ! jumped back, and
so did he. We were both scared half to death.
We had both jumped so far that we could scarcely
see each other in the fog, but it seemed to me I had
caught sight of out own uniform. I made ready
to run at him with the bayonet in case of need.
and then I whispered at him.
" I say, you little blinkin' beggar," he called
back, "you've shortened my bloomin' life ten
years with the fright I got; that's what you've
done."
It was old " Piccadilly Charlie", one of out
patrol.
I asked him if he knew where out trench lay,
but he was just as much lost as I was. He had
crawled away when the bomb blew up, and had
been roaming about alone, trying to make up his
mind what to do.
" I'm thinkin', Mascot," said Charlie, " that it's
best to just keep on walkin'. If there was any
other way of passin' the time, well and good, but
there aih't."
It must have been about half an hour later that
we came up against some wires.
" It's an even chance whether it's the Huns' or
our own," said Charlie.
We found a break in the fence, and crawled
through. Charlie was just ahead of me. He had
almost reached the sand-bags, when he turned and
came crawling back. I knew what that meant.
We got through the hole in the fence again,

oo THE FIGHTING MASCOT

crawled for a few yards, and then walked. Know-
ing where the Germans were helped us a little, for
we could keep on going straight for a few yards
anyway. As it happened, we must have gone
fairly straight all the way, for before long we
round ourselves in front of our own trench.
The Sergeant and six others, one with his hand
blown off, had got there before us. Two others
came in the next night, having lain in a shell-hole
all day. Two nights later a patrol-party found the
body of another. What became of the rest-I don't
ŒErlOW'o

CHAPTER XVI

The Low-down Cur

There were a few new soldiers in our Company
when we came out of rest billets. One of them
was a tall, lank, shifty-eyed lad called " Spike ". I
didn't like the look of him from the first time I set
eyes on him. He was a bad one. I'd have laid
my pay to that. There were men among us who
knew ail about him, and they said he had never
done an honest day's work in his life till the army
took him, and that he had been known as a killer
back in Liverpool.
"Watch out for that blighter," Big Tom told us.
" I'm saying he's a low-down cur, and that's not
saying hall enough about him."
Spike didn't have a friend in the trench, except
a lad who had been rying ever since he got to
the front to get somebody to shoot off his trigger
finger so he could get back to Blighty. The rest
of us kept away from him as much as we could.
Spike had heard that Big Tom had been saying
things about him, and he swore he would get even
some day.
" And he will, too, if he gets the chance," said

o2 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

Big Tom. "He was behind the bars once for
knifing a man in the back, and he's thinking, like
as not, about doing that same thing to me. I know
the kind he is. He'd never meet a man face to
face, not he."
Not many men like Spike were among us, but
there were a few, and some black stories were
being told about two or three of them. If a man
wanted to do murder he could find no better place
than the front for it, because he could blame it on
the Germans, and nobody would know the differ-
ence. And such things had been done in the
trenches, so the stories went.
"We've had others like this new-corner," said
a chunky little chap who was known as " Spud "
"There was that fox-faced bloke who was killed last
week for one. l've been thinking he got what he
deserved when the shell hit him. It was no Hun
bullet that killed old Kelly a month ago. It was
that fox-faced blighter's gun that did it. He had
sworn he'd get him, and when Kelly fell he was
close beside him, and his gun was smoking. It's
easy getting away with a deed like that out here."
A few days later Bonesey caught Spike stealing
his fags. Bonesey was a good-natured lad as a
rule, but before he had managed to get those
cigarettes he had gone without smoking for three
days, except when he picked up a butt some officer
had dropped, and he was red-hot with rage when
he caught Spike trying to steal them. Spike got
a blow in the jaw that sent him sprawling in the

THE LOW-DOWN CUR o 3
mud. When he picked himself up he was feeling
his teeth to see if they were all there.
"¥ou got what was coming to you," I told him.
"Anybody who'll steal fags should get worse than
that."
He squinted his eyes and looked me up and
dOWno
" I'd hand yer one, ye little imp," he growled,
" if it wasn't for "the big friends you've got about
yer. But wait a while. There's some here that's
got something comin' to em' from me and they'll
get it some day."
" Some night yer mean," said Bonesey. "Some
time in the dark and be'ind their backs. 1 knows
the kind of muck you cone from. I may llOt be
much to brag of meself, but if I wasn't a few
shades better than you l'd put a bullet through me
Spike slunk away, but we knew there was
murder in his heart.
"There's three of us 'e's got marked for future
reference," said Bonesey. "I'm one, you're another,
Big Tom's a third. Watch out, ladY"
Spike kept away from us as much as he could
after that. He was a lonely beggar, with scarcely
a word for anybody, but the surly look in his eyes
told us fairly well what he was thinking about.
It happened a little later that he and Big Tom
were on night guard at the saine rime. Our line
never ran straight, but was ail curls and angles,
and between the two posts the trench bent

o 4 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
backward like a letter V. Tom was on one side
of the V and Spike on the other, and they were
hot fifty yards apart. The night was so black
that they couldn't see each other, but each knew
exactly where the other was.
Before long a bullet came sputtering into the
sand-bags at the spot where Big Tom stood. A
few minutes later another struck in the same place,
and Tom began to think it queer that the two had
found the same mark on a quiet night when the
Huns were doing so little shooting.
He took a peep over the top, and at the saine
moment an exploding shell sent a dazzling light
over the trench, just as the shell exploded some-
thing struck his helmet, and he fell over to the
bottom. I-te picked himself up unhurt, but the
top of lais helmet had a hole in it. It was hot
such a hole as a bit of a shell would have made,
but had been drilled by a bullet.
Big Tom knew who had sent that bullet, but he
said nothing about it till the next evening, when I
heard him telling the story.
"Full well I knew he was going to do some-
thing of the kind sooner or later," he was saying,
"but my mind was running on other things than
him last night, and I didn't expect it. Then those
two bullets came plunk into the sand-bags and set
me wondering. When the shell exploded my face
was toward the spot where that blighter was posted,
and for half a second I saw him plainer than if the
sun had been up. He was just going to shoot,

THE LOW-DO'VN CUR fo5

and, so help me! his gun was pointing straight at
me. Don't tell me it wasn't his bullet that got me.
I know better."
5;0, as if the danger from the Huns wasn't bad
enough, it was plain murder we must guard against.
We were not afraid of the Boches any longer,
because we had been fighting them so long, but
we were afraid of Spike. He was as sly and
tricky as any German, and he had a better chance
at us than they had. They would have to fight
hard to get at us, and risk their lires doing so, but
Spike could strike from behind us or shoot close
by from the dark with small danger to himself.
" I'm thinkin' some of us would better 'are a
little talk with that gay lad, and put some fear into
'is black heart," Bonesey suggested.
But Big Tom shook his head.
"'Twould do little good," he said. " He's an
old-timer at dirty tricks, and there's no scarin' him.
We got to be careful, that's all. He may get one
of us and he may not. If he's a bullet in his belt
that's got my number or yours, you or me will get
it sooner or later."
From that night on I kept the tail of my eye on
Spike, and whenever I knew he was near me in
the dark my nerves would start a-jumping.

CHAPTER XVII

Boncscy Bccomcs a Hcro

Very soon we had other troubles to worry over,
and for the time we forgot about Spike. The
German artiIIery opened up on us, and while the
shelling lasted our trench was dreadfully unhealthy.
In all the time we had been at the front we never
had had such a dose from the big guns as we got
then.
" Lie down and duck your heads when you hear
a shell coming," an officer san.o_, out to us just after
the first one had struck close by.
The next minute we heard another one on the
way, and we all went down on our knees or our
stomachs. We put our hands over our eyes so
that we should not be blinded if flying splinters
came our way, and waited for the explosion. The
thing burst a few yards off and spattered us with
dirt.
Then a shrapnel-shell burst just over us, so
close that I almost felt the heat of it. I thought
I was done for that time, and it surprised me when
I couldn't feel any pain. I twitched my arms and
legs to make sure there was nothing wrong with
10t5

BONESEY BECOMES A HERO o7
them, and they moved easily enough, but I couldn't
understand why none of that shrapnel had hit me
when it was flying all around me as thicl< as files.
At least one poor chap hadn't been so ltaclçy, for I
heard a cry for stretcher-bearers.
" Blimey! That was a bad one !" said the lad
next to me. " lust bave copped more than one
of us. ,Ve'll ail go west if many more lil,:e that
corne this way."
" Spud's down," somebody called.
"Aye! And three more. Hope there's no
more shrapnel comin'."
A wounded man was groaning dreadfully some-
where near. Then another shell came and sent
the dirt flyino- over us again. Every" minute one
flew over us, sometimes sending splinters into the
trench; and most of the time we were on out
knees or our stomachs with out hands over our
eyes.
I thought that shelling would never stop.
There's nothing worse than heavy shell-fire--the
awful noise of it, the flying splinters, and the think-
ing that every minute that passes may be your
last. Give me bullets, give me tain and mud,
give me rats and cooties, anything but shell-fire.
I'd bave gone through No lIan's Land twice over
if I had had my choice, rather than spend rive
minutes in a trench where the shells were flying.
The waiting for each shell to burst, and the shock
from the crash of them, get on a lad's nerves till
he shal,:es all over.

fo8 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

For two hours the shelling lasted, and then of a
sudden stopped. We got up and stretched our-
selves, and we all looked as if we hadn't slept for
a weekJall of us that were left, for the stretcher-
bearers had been busy, and there was many a face
I missed. For a long time my head buzzed from
the noise of the shells, and every nerve in my body
was on the jump.
A little later a sentry caught sight of a wounded
man out in front. Vfe thought he must be one of
a small raiding-party that had gone out the night
before. Almost every one of us took chances
with bullets to take a look at him from over the
top. Every little vhile he would wave his hand
to call our attention to him, even though it brought
the danger of being seen by the Boches, who
would bave fired on him if they had known he
was alive.
It was dreadful to see him lying suffering out
there, probably with no water left in his bottle,
while we knew we could do nothing to help him.
It was hot, hot as blazes, and he was lying with
his face to the glaring sun. And we could only
watch him suffer.
"Blimey! I can't stand lookin' at him any
more," said Tom, who had a soft heart in his big
body. "If it wasn't that I have a wife and chil-
dren at home I'd go out after him. I would that."
" 'Twould be no more than foolishness," the Ser-
geant told him. "You wouldn't live to get half-
way. Vfhat's the sense in committing suicide?"

BONESEY BECOMES A HERO o9

"There'd be just a chance if 'twas dark," said
Bonesey, "and it will be that when night falls, for
the moon don't get up till late."
"There might be," the Sergeant said; "and
again there might hOt. The Boches were never
so wide awake as these last few days."
"Who is the poor bloke lying out there?"
somebody asked. "Anybody know?"
The Sergeant shook his head.
"Five men were missing from that last patrol-
party when it got back. He may be any one of
those rive. Or he may have been out there for days.
Perhaps he's been lying in a shell-hole, where we
couldn't see him, and has managed to crawl out of
it. Anyway, he's one of our own men. I got a
good look at him, and I know that."
"The Germans will get sight of him soon if he
keeps on signalling," said Billy. "It's a pity we
can't let him know we've seen him so he'll lie
quiet."
After a time Bonesey stepped up to me looking
solemn as an owl.
"Mascot," he said, "I'm thinkin' some one of
us blokes should go out and bring that lad in,
whoever he may be."
"I'm too small," I said. "I couldn't carry him."
" 'Ow about me?" said Bonesey. "I've no
woman nor kids. 'Twould be better to get shot
out there than while sneakin' through some rich
bloke's 'ouse back 'orne. 'Twould sort of improve
me reputation with Scotland Yard, I'm thinkin'."

o THE FIGHTING MASCOT

Ail the rest of the day I couldn't get the
wounded man out of my mind. Every lad in the
trench looked serious; there was never a smile
nor a laugh, for how could we be cheerful while
that poor suffering chap lay out there just beyond
us signalling for help and hot getting it? It was
the first day that passed without a song, and even
Billy, who was the finest singer in the lot, and one
of the jolliest, never raised his voice.
A little after dark Bonesey said to the Ser-
geant -
"I'm goin' over the top to bring 'ira in. The
Boches won't see me now."
The Sergeant nodded, and Bonesey went up
the ladder.
"Hug the ground," the Sergeant called after
him. '«Don't lift your head, or they'll get you
sure. And don't forger to lie still whenever they
send up a light."
I wished the night had been darker, for though
the moon wasn't up the stars were shining in a
clear sky, and we could see all the way across to
the German line. Yet it might bave been worse,
for there was hardly any rifle-firing at the time,
and the heavies and the typewriters were as quiet
as a church.
I climbed up, and watched Bonesey on his way.
He was too wise a lad to take foolish chances, and
was moving along almost fiat to the ground and
as slow as a turtle. He was well beyond the
wires when a star-shell went up and sent a glare

BONESEY BECOMES A HERO 

over him. 1 could feel my heart jump. But he
lay as still as a dead man while the light lasted,
and no shot came his way. A moment later he
went out of sight in some dip in the ground or a
shell-hole, and I didn't see him again for a long
rime. Then I heard somebody cry:
"There he is! Strike me pink! He's got him!
He's got him!"
And, so help me! he had got him. He was
crawling with the wounded lad on his back. It
was slow work over that rough ground, with a
shell-hole in the way every few feet, and I couldn't
see how the Germans could help seeing him, but
there was no sign that they did. I could hardly
breathe as I waited for the next light to go up.
They would surely see him then, I thought.
He was half-way back when the light broke.
He stopped and lay low, but the wounded man on
top of him was a mark the Boches couldn't rail to
see. Bullets began to fly, and the lights went up
one after another in quick succession.
Bonesey and his man got into a shell-hole, and
lay there for a good half-hour. Then they came
in sight, not twenty yards away. The Germans
saw them, and began firing again. When close
to our line Bonesey stopped crawling, got to his
feet, and broke into a run. I t takes a strong man
to do that with such a weight on his back. He
got to our parapet, and two men climbed up to
help him down.
Bonesey hadn't so much as a scratch, but the

z THE FIGHTING MASCOT

man he had brought in lay still, and his eyes were
closed. '
"A bullet got 'im as I was crawlin' with 'ira,"
Bonesey said. "I iear 'e's done for."
The Sergeant knelt over the poor chap, and
round the bullet-hole in the back of his head.
H e was stone dead.

BULLETS BEGAN TO FL$.', AND THE LIGHTS ,VENT UP ONE
AFTER ANOTHER

CHAPTER XVIII

The Man from America

Don't let me forget the man from America, for
I have been so busy telling about the fighting
that I haven't mentioned that chummy lad who,
when we were feeling blue and homesick, and
things were at their worst, ruade us forger the
shells, the rats, the mud, and all our troubles, as he
told us of his adventures in strange lands.
His naine was M'Bride. A tall, skinny chap
he was, with a twinkle in his eyes, and a good
word for everybody. He was one of the new men
in our Company, and from that trench he was
getting his first look at the war.
Many a queer story M'Bride told us of digging
gold in the Klondike, of hunting bears in the
Rocky Mountains, of cowboy lire on the plains,
for he had been everywhere in America where
there was adventure to be round.
"Now let me ask yer, did yer ever see any
Indians?" Piccadilly said to him one day.
"Sure," M'Bride answered. "Lots of 'em.
l've fought against 'em when they were trying to
raid New York City. We drove 'em back into
Jersey, where they got away in the woods."
113

4 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
"What yer givin' us?" growled Piccadilly, his
little eyes getting red, as they always did when he
was angry. "Do yer think I know no more of
America than to swallow one like that? There's
no Indians within two hundred toiles of New
York."
"You're right," spoke up M'Bride, without so
much as blinking. "Did I say New York? It
was a slip of the tongue. It was Buffalo I meant."
"That's more like it," said Piccadilly.
"They came again a few days later," M'Bride
went on, "and did a war dance around the edge
of the town. Then they raided us, waving their
tomahawks, and yelling fit to freeze your blood.
They captured the mayor, tied him to a stake,
stuck pine-needles into his skin and set tire to
them. Then they scalped him. We rescued him
just in time, but he's had to wear a toupee ever
since."
"You should have fighting enough over there,
without comin' to this bloomin' place," Piccadilly
said, as he puffed his cigarette.
"I wanted a change," M'Bride explained.
"And I thought I'd like to see England, and take
a squint at the King."
"It's easy seein' 'ira," Bonesey put in. "I've
met 'ira 'undreds of times as he strolled along the
street with a gold crown on 'is 'ead, an ermine
robe flappin' round 'im, and a big cigar between 'is
teeth."
Of course old Bonesey was spoofing the Yankee

THE MAN FROM AMERICA 5

lad--"stringing" or "joshing" as they say in
America.
"We've kings of our own," M'Bride said.
"Oil-kings, steel-kings, soap-kings, all kinds of
kings. Whenever one of 'em wants to build a
new palace he levies an extra tax on his subjects,
and without the trouble of asking his parliament
about it, either. Any one of 'ena is so rich he
could buy ail of King George"s crown jewels and
give 'em to the kids for playthings."
This M'Bride was much given to boasting,
though not so much about himself as of his coun-
try. He thought the war would be over very
soon now that the Yankees were coming in.
"We used to think that if we sent the Giants
or the Red Sox over here we could clean up most
of Europe without much trouble," he said, " but it
looks now as if we'd have to send a few of our
regiments. When they get here we'll lead you
straight through to Berlin without stopping, and
we'll have the Kaiser singing'The Star Spangled
Banner', and wishing he'd never sunk the LusitaMa.
We're going to take him back with us and put him
in the Central Park Zoo."
But even with all his boasting we all liked
him well, and there was never a rime when he
wasn't glad to cheer us up a bit with his tales of
the wild places he had lived in. Listening to
him brought back my old longing to take to the
sea and visit such places as he had seen. He
had even been in the West Indies and the ports

t6 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

of the old-time buccaneers, and, like as not, had
seen the very island that Jim Hawkins told about.
"There's many an island l've been to down
in those seas," he told me, "that was once the
hiding-place of pirate gold. And there's plenty
of the gold buried on some of 'em to this day.
Men still go digging for it, though it's only once
in a half-century or so that they find any worth
mentioning. But it's the Klondike you should
go to, son, if it's adventure you're looking for.
If your luck's with you you'll find gold; if hOt,
you may starve or freeze to death hunting for it.
No need of going to war for excitement when
there are such places as that scattered over the
map. But you want to take a ,,'ad of money with
you, for prices are way up. l've been in Dawson
when eggs were rive dollars a-piece, and if you
took a girl into a restaurant and bought ber a
couple of 'em fried she'd be yours for lire. There
was a one-eyed, ugly-looking guy there who stole
the belle of the town away from as handsome
a feller as you ever set eyes on, and who couldn't
understand how it had been done till he round
the one-eyed guy had been buying her fried eos "
He told us of his lire in the high mountains, of
the bears he tracked through the forests, of the
mountain lions that came prowling down to his
camp after dark and howled all night; and there
wasn't a man among us who didn't wish he was
out of the blooming war and in some such place
as that,

THE MAN FROM AMERICA

"That's the life, son," he would say. " It beats
the trenches; and, believe me, I'm going back to
it as soon as this fuss is over."
The bullets would be flying over us, and the
big guns roaring as he told his stories, but I
didn't seem to hear them at all. I was 'way over
there in America, in the places he was telling
about, digging gold and hunting bears.

CHAPTER XIX

On the March

Good news came at last. We were going to
leave Ypres. Where they were going to send
us we didn't know, but somewhere south. But,
wherever it was, we learned there would be days
of marching, instead of being cooped up like rats
in the dirty trenches.
We didn't shed any tears over leaving that old
hole in the ground, but we were sorry for the
poor chaps who relieved us, for we knew what
we had been through and what they would bave
to put up with after us.
On a fine starlit night we filed out to the vear
with our big packs on our shoulders, and struck
into the road. There were thousands of other
men on that road, ail coming up to the Ypres
front, and we cheered them as they marched by,
regiment after regiment. They were ail singing,
and we gave them song for song. I wondered
where they had corne from and what fights they
had been in, for they were no new soldiers just
over, but old veterans, who had been in many

ON THE MARCH

II 9

a battle. A jolly crowd they were. Little they
cared what trouble might be waiting for them
ahead. They had been through so much that
nothing more could worry them.
Sometimes the road was so crowded that we
had to pass in single file, exchanging jokes with
the lads who were passing us, and telling them
what nice trenches we had left for them at Ypres.
Sometimes ail of us--those coming and going--
would have to get out of the way for the am-
munition wagons that came banging and rattling
along with mules and horses at a gallop. Some-
times, at a big bend in the road, we could see the
lighted ends of the soldiers' cigarettes trailing
along for a toile or more, like a file of tire-
files.
Till long after midnight we marched, halting
now and then to rest beside the road, and at last
we turned in for some sleep in an open field just
outside a little village.
Oh, it felt good to be out in the open country
again, away from the shells and the bullets, and
to lie out in the green grass and the flowers and
listen to the frogs singing in the marshes! I
was tired from the march, but I lay awake for
an hour listening to those croaking frogs and
looking over to the little village that was such
a pretty sight against the sky.
When the sun came up the blrds were singing
all around us, and I felt as fresh as a daisy. We
fell in after breakfast, and took the road that led
(o9e) 9

t2o THE FIGHTING MASCOT

through the village. Our band was playing, and
we were all singing as we trailed along behind
it; for it was singing that ruade the marching
easy and kept our spirits up. When we got to
the cobble-stoned village streets the band began
to play " Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", and
you should have heard the women and children
cheer the tune and clap their hands as we went
swinging by.
"That's the stuff!" M'Bride cried. "That's
the best tune l've heard since l've been at the
front, l'm fed up with ' God Save the King!'"
A few moments later the band gave us "The
Star-Spangled Banner", and that American began
to yell like a savage.
"Sing it, fellers! Give us the grand old
song!" he cried.
And sing it we did--those of us that knew the
words. The regiments that passed us on their
way to Ypres took it up from us, and in a few
minutes there were miles of Britishers singing
the American song.
We passed through so many villages that day
that I lost count of them, and in each one the
women and children and old men came out to
welcome us. We were near the edge of France,
and often they were singing the "Marseillaise"
as we passe&
About dark we halted for the night at a place
that had been fairly well banged to pieces by the
Boches. Hall the cottages were without roofs,

ON THE MARCH 12x

and the little church had lost its tower. But
the Boches had been gone for many months,
and the village was as peaceful as a graveyard
FIOWo
"I want a bath," said Billy, "and I know
where l'm going to get it. There's a brook not
far from here. Come on, Mascot!"
" I'm thinkin' you should 'ave been born a
duck or a fish," grumbled Bonesey. " I never
knew such a bloke for wantin' to dabble in the
water. ¥ou'll wash the 'ide off of yer some day.
It ain't 'ealthy, so much bathin'."
So Bonesey left us, and went hunting for a
place where he could buy some beer, and Billy
and I went off through the fields toward the
brook. We round it in a little woodmas fine a
brook as I ever saw, with clear, cool water, and
shiny pebbles underneath. We stripped, and
splashed into it in a hurry, and oh, how good it
felt! The dirt was caked into us, and we didn't
have any soap, but we lay on the pebbly bottom
and soaked till we got half-way clean. When
we came out we round a patch of sort moss, and
we lay there till we were dry, for the evening
was warm.
Then we stroIIed back to the village, where
we found a woman who could speak a little
English, and who told us how she and ber chil-
dren had lived in her cellar for two days while
the Germans were shelling the place. She had
heard from the soldiers that had passed through

122 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

on their way towards Ypres that there was big
fighting going on to the south of us, and that
the Germans were getting the worst of it.
"That's what they're sending us into," said
Billy. "There's lively times ahead, lad."
The villagers took as many of out men into
their bouses as they had room for; but Billy,
Bonesey, and I slept in the open again, and we
were glad to be out there rather than under a
roof, since the night was clear and dry. But
luck turned against us, for along toward morn-
ing it began to rain. When day broke it was
coming down in sheets, and the cheer had all
gone out of us. We fell into line for the march,
sopping wet, and the whole Company was grum-
bling and swearing, for they couldn't even smoke,
the rain was so heavy.
Regiments were still going past us, and they
were a dreary-looking crowd in the storm. Never
a song was heard, and even the bands had stopped
playing. Now and then some of the lads passing
by wotald call out something about hot times to
the south, so we knew the woman in the village
had told us the truth, and that we were in for it.
But there wasn't a sign of trouble so far, and the
woods and fields were as quiet as if the war were
a hundred toiles away.
Ail day we marched, stopping every two or
three hours for rest, and the rain never stoppe&
The wind was blowing in our faces, and the storm
half blinded us. The water ruade out packs and

ON THE MARCH

23

our clothes as heavy as lead, and squirted from
our boots with every step.
"This bloomin' battalion's got a curse on it,"
grumbled Bonesey. " Nothin' but trouble for us
poor blokes wherever we goes."

CHAPTER XX

Sinking in the Bog

That night we spent in the sopping fields beside
the road. Ail night the rain came down, with
never a let-up, and when morning broke it was
still with us. Ail day we marched through it,
silent and glum, and whenever a voice was raised
it was only to grumble and growl and curse.
" I 'opes yer gettin' washin' enough to satisfy
yer for the time," Bonesey called to Billy. "¥er
won't be cryin' for a bath again just yet, I'm
thinkin'."
Billy was too much fed up with trouble to
answer. Never had I known a time when there
were fewer words passed along the line; and so
it was ail day--not a joke nor a song.
Then another night in the wet. Yet we slept
like the dead, for we were nigh to being done
for, from the weight of our packs and the beating
of the wind and rain against us. When the
bugles called us up in the cold, grey dawn the
rain was coming down as hard as ever.
" If only I'ad a dry fag now I could bear up
and be a bit cheery," Bonesey grumbled, "but

SINKING IN THE BOG

me smokes are soaked through and spoiled,
hevery one of 'em. Any bloke got a dry fag
about 'im?"
"'Ear 'ira! 'As any bloke got a dry fag!" came
from somewhere in the line. "Wot does 'e think
it's been doin' these last days and nights? 'E
must 'ave dreamt the sun was shinin'. There's
hot a dry fag in the bloomin' army."
And the lad was right; there wasn't a dry
thing of any kind in the blooming army, hOt even
out skins, for we were as well soaked as if we had
dropped into a pond with out clothes on.
Along toward the end of the day there came
a grumbling and roaring from the south.
"There's thunder," said Piccadilly. "That
don't sound much like it was goin' to clear."
"Thunder me eyel" growled the Sergeant.
" It's guns."
The noise grew louder as we marched on, and
it was as the Sergeant had told us; it was the
guns. We were getting near the fighting, though
it was little we felt like going into more trouble
than we had already. The fighting-blood was
all soaked out of us. For once I hated to think
of going into battle. I wanted to see the sun
shine, and to be out lying in the grass in the
dry, open fields again, with everything quiet and
peaceful and the birds singing.
Maybe out officers knew what was ahead of
us in the way of fighting, and knew just where
we were going to, but they never let us poor

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

Tommies know about such things. It was just
follow orders with us, and ask no questions. It
was just work and march and fight with us, and
bear our troubles as well as we might, while the
officers did the thinking, and got whatever infor-
mation there was, and kept their mouths shut
about it. But we couldn't help wondering where
the battle was, and how it was going, and whether
the Boches were getting beaten or our line was
breaking. And the only answer we got to ail
the questions we asked ourselves was the roaring
of those guns.
"They're speakin' to us," said Bonesey.
"They're sayin', "Urry up! 'Urry up! 'Urry
up, and get into the fight!' And that's the only
word that ever comes for us poor tired beggars."
We got into the edge of the fuss the next day,
when shrapnel began to crack over our heads.
A shell exploded in a cottage a few hundred
yards away, and up shot a mass of black smoke
and flying dust and bricks. When the smoke
cleared away the cottage was gone. There
wasn't even a scrap of a wall left.
The Boches had the range of our road, so we
turned off from it to get away from their tire, and
struck through the fields. Sometimes we were
pushing through the long, wet grass, but often we
were wallowing in ploughed ground, where the
mud was over our ankles and the going was hard
enough to take the heart out of the strongest
of us.

SINKING IN THE BOG

At last we came back to the road, and soon
we began to see signs of the fighting. Artillery
limbers were rolling along the cross-roads, through
the driving rain, with ammunition, and galloping
horses were dragging empty limbers back for
more. Red Cross motors came in sight, moving
carefully along, full of wounded men. Then a
group of wounded came walking by, and, for ail
their hurts and their dripping clothes, their spirits
were still high, for they were Iaughing and joking.
One was limping along between two comrades
who had bandages round their heads, and an-
other, just able to hobble, passed by ail alone,
looking white and sick.
It grew dark, yet we were still on the march.
And the rain was still coming down, with the
wind whistling through it. The night grew inky
black, and I could scarcely see the lad who
marched shoulder to shoulder beside me. What
a night that was! But the swish of the water
and the roar of the wind were as nothing to the
noise of the big guns. There were shells flying
overhead, and, as they broke, they sent a glare
far up into the sky across the sheets of rain, so
that the big drops looked miles long.
We left the road again, and there's no telling
how our officers managed to find our way in ail
that blackness. Maybe they didn't find it. They
may have taken the wrong course for ail I know.
But I know that, whether it was the right way
or the wrong one, it was a dreadful course to

28 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

follow. Over sticky furrows we stumbled and
fell, we slipped in wet grass, we bumped into
trees, and we went splashing into pools of water
to our waists.
Then a shell struck among us, and there came
cries and groans from wounded men and shouts
from the officers. But we could see nota thing -
of what was going on. Not even the ground at
out feet could we see. Dark nights I have known
at the front, and many of them, but never one so
black as that. Even the light of the lanterns
spread only a few feet through the storm.
A squad of about twenty of us got separated
from the column when the shell exploded. A
moment later the man who carried out lantern
fell into a hole of water, and the light went out
for good. We groped about, trying to find out
way back to the test of the Company. After a
while we stood still and listened. Wherever the
column was, we couldn't hear them, nor an¥ other
sound but the storm and the guns.
Then we went into the mudwworse mud than
any we had pulled through since the tain began.
One moment we were sinking into it half-way to
out knees, and it was as much as we could do to
pull ourselves free; the next we were splashing
in pools of water, while the mud at the bottom
gripped out feet.
We floundered along, not knowing which way
to turn, and the bog grew worse and worse.
Once I went into the mire to my knees, and

SINKING IN THE BOG a9
thought I was lost, for it took the last bit of
trength that was left me to get out.
There came a cry for help.
" I'm sinking! I'm sinking!" the voice cried.
"The mud's sucking me down!"
And then:
"We can't help him. We're sinking our-
selves."
I felt the mud pulling me down too. Not
another step could I take. Ail the time I was
struggling to get loose, the voice of the frightened
lad, whoever he was, was crying for help over
and over again.
Then came a flash of light. It ma¥ have been
lightning, or it may have been a bursting shell,
or a mine, or a rocket. I was too busy trying to
save myself to know what it came from. Ail
I knew was that it lit up the whole bog with
a dazzling glare, and that close in front of us a
lad had sunk into the mud to his shoulders and
was slowly going out of sight.
For hall a second we saw him. His face
showed white as chalk, and his arms were reach-
ing out to us. Then the light went out.
For a few moments he kept calling to us.
Then we heard him no more. Another light
flashed, and in the spot where he had been there
was nothing but black mud. I began to shiver
and shake as the mud drew me down. It took
the heart out of me, that sight.
I cried out, for I thought the bog had got me

3o THE FIGHTING MASCOT
for good and all. An arm reached out from
behind and grabbed me, and with that help I
pulled myself free. The next step brought me
to firmer ground.
"We'll ail be done for if we don't get out of
here soon," said the lad who had helped me. " I
was almost gone myself a minute ago, and I'm
that twisted I don't know which way to turn."
Close together we moved carefully along, and
soon we found easier going. Before long we
heard someone calling out, "This way, boys!"
and we followed the voice. After a few minutes
we had reached grass-covered fields, and, as a
light flashed, we saw the road hot a hundred
yards ahead.

CHAPTER XXI

The Battle of Flanders

As we were drawing away from the bog a man
edged up to me out of somewhere in the black-
ness and kept by my side. I spoke, but he said
not a word. After a time, in one of those flashes
oflight, I looked square into his face. The sight
of it turned me cold, for it was Spike who was
beside me.
I jumped away from him, and I am not sure
that I didn't cry out, for my nerves had gone
to pieces in the struggle in the mud. Even back
in that bog I should rather have been, taking
chances with being swallowed by it, than out
there in the open alone on such a night, with that
blighter sneaking along beside me in the pitchy
dark. He could knife me or shoot me, and no-
body would ever be the wiser.
I made off from him as fast as I could, but it
seemed to me that all the time he was keeping
behind me. It may have been my shaky nerves
that made me think so, for, when I got to the
road where the lights of marching regiments were
flickering along the way, I was alone.
11

3 2 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

As I sat resting by the roadside, and trying to
scrape some of the thick cakes of mud from my
clothes and boots, a few lads came straggling out
of the fields and joined me. They were part of
out Company, and had been with me in the bog.
As shaky as I they were, and we were all so tired
out from what we had been through, that as we
started off to try to find our place in the column
we slunk along as if our feet had been weighted
with lead.
" I'd give all my back pay for a fag," said one
of them, some lad I must have known, though I
couldn't recognize him in the dark. " My nerves
are jumping something awful. And nota smoke
among us! I lost my gun, and nigh to lost my
lire along with it, in that mud-hole. Blimey! I
wish this bloomin' night was over."
As fast as we could we marched along the road,
and hot very far ahead we came up with our bat-
talion. The lads in our Company didn't even
know we had been away; they didn't know any-
thing but that the rain was soaking through them
and that their packs were growing heavier with
every step.
Before long we turned off the road again, and
we round, a little farther on, that they were sending
us into the trenches. They were more like brooks
than trenches. We waded through them with the
water up to our knees. Hall dead we were for
want of sleep, but it was little rest we got that
night in all the wet.

THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS 133
It was there that we learned that our army had
been driving the H uns back for almost a week,
and that there was big fighting going on over
more than twenty mlles of line. We were on the
edge of the great Battle of Flanders, and Fritzie
was getting his worst beating since the Marne.
In the morning the storm let up, but it was a
dark, foggy day, and our clothes were still sopping
wet. I could think of nothing but that I wanted
to go to sleep, and every time I sat down my
head began to nod. But there was no time to
doze. They were going to send us into the fight,
and we had to clean our guns and make ready.
Before long our artillery got to work, and made
a terrible din. It was the biggest bombardment
I had ever heard, and our officers told us that we
were giving the Germans twice as many shells as
they were sending back. We knew well what all
the big gun-fire meant. They were getting the
German trenches into shape for us to break
through. They were going to wipe those
trenches out if they could, so that we could meet
Fritzie in the open.
In the afternoon, soaked and tired though we
were, we went over the top and at them. I t was
mud, mud, mud everywhere, and it was ail we
could do to get through it. We slipped, and fell,
and wallowed a bit, and were up again, and the
mud was caked over us from head to foot as we
drove forward through the bullets and shells.
Ahead of us, in the mist, I saw a grey line of

134

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

men crouching out in the open with their bayonets
ready for us. We went into them full tilt, and we
round that they were lined up in front of trenches
that had been shot to pieces and almost levelled
by the big shells.
A Hun rose up out of a hole in front of tue,
and the mud and water was dripping from him as
he jabbed at me with his bayonet. I caught his
gun against mine and turned it. And then I got
him. He dropped back into his hole, and I heard
the mud splash as he fell.
Near by, some Boches were jumping into a
dug-out through a door in the top. We went
for them, and the door closed with a bang. We
tried to break through, but the door was made of
steel and was fastened tight. The whole dug-out
was steel and concrete, and had held fast through
ail the shell-fire that had wiped out the trench.
If we had pried away at it all night we wouldn't
have made a dent.
A group of bombers came up and crouched
down beside the door to wait for it to open.
" Fritzie'll 'ave to open up some time," said a
fat Tommy who held a bomb in his fist, "and
w'en 'e does we'll drop a few of these into 'im."
The Huns' line went all to pieces as we drove
înto it, and in hOt much more than a minute
there were hundreds of Boches with their hands
in the air, singing " Kamerad!"
We went on to attack the second line, and
there, too, we found the trenches almost wiped

THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS ,35
out and the Huns waiting for us in front of them.
They had had such an awful dose of shell-fire
that they didn't put up much of a fight, and the
cold steel we gave them did the trick in no rime.
I came back with three prisoners who had been
turned over to me to take to the rear. As we
passed the concrete dug-out the bombers were
still crouching over the steel door waiting. They
were like cats watching a mouse-hole.
" I'm tellin' yer it's only a question of rime,"
said the fat Tommy. "Then they opens the
door and we drops the bombs."
One of my prisoners was an oflîcer, and he
was showing signs of getting balky. I tickled
him with the point of my bayonet, and he gave a
yell and went ahead without any more trouble.
I drove the three of them along in front of me
through the mud, letting them know the bayonet
wasn't keeping very far away from their skins,
and it was as easy as driving horses. But I was
a bit worried when I saw the fog creeping in
around us again, thinking that if it oe,ot thick
they might try to break away.
They must have been thinking the same thing,
for, when the fog did thicken up a bit, one of
them jumped into it and tan. I fired at him, and
I must have hit him somewhere, for I heard him
yell, but he kept on running. I couldn't go after
him with the other two on my hands, and belote I
could shoot again he was hidden in the fog. But
! was thankful he wasn't the of-ficer.
(c. 976  0

136 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
The fighting was still going on all along the line,
but I didn't have any more of it that day. After
I delivered my prisoners I found a fairly dry spot
in our trench with nobody near, and I curled up
in it for a bit of rest. I was so fagged I couldn't
have kept going rive minutes more, and I had no
more than touched the ground when I dropped
asleep.
A sergeant woke me up with a crack from the
butt of his gun on the soles of my feet. I must
have been sleeping there more than an hour, so
some of the lads told me. It did me good. I
felt fresh again, and like going out and doing
some more fighting.
When night came the big guns were still going,
and we heard that some of our infantry" was at-
tacking in the dark not far away.
Next morning we went to work digging trenches
where the shells had levelled those of the Huns,
and filling sand-bags for the parapets. As it
grew dark we were hurried up to the new front
and into a trench we had taken from the Ger-
mans, but which had been left in fairly good
shape. The Boches were getting ready to attack,
and we had small chance of sleep.
About two hours after dark their artillery
opened up strong, and a little later they came
at us.
We climbed up, and met them in front of the
sand-bags. We put the bayonets to them. and
the punishment they got from us was more than

THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS I37

they could stand. Little by little we pushed them
back, and when their line broke we chased them
through the mud, stumbling over the dead and
wounded.
It was then that I saw Spike going forward a
few feet away from me, and I kept the tail of an
eye on him, knowing well that he hadn't forgotten
his grudge, and that he was still waiting for a
chance to get even. A little later I caught sight
of Bonesey. Spike was just behind him, keeping
the saine distance as they went forward, and I
knew it was no German he was after. He was
tracking Bonesey and waiting for his chance, for
he never let him get out of his sight. I tan for-
ward to give Bonesey a warning, but I hadn't
reached him when Spike raised his gun and tire&
Bonesey clapped a hand to his cheek, where the
bullet had cut a gash through the skin, and at the
same time a German in front of him fell forward
dead. He had been killed by the same bullet.
Bonesey wheeled around, with his gun raised
ready to shoot, but Spike had ruade off into the
dark, and we didn't see him again till the fighting
was over.
We might bave complained fo an officer of what
he had done; but what would we gain by it? Spike
could say he had shot at the German, and we
could never prove that he hadn't. And yet we
knew well that he wou[d try the saine trick again
sooner or later.
"Some one of these nights, or some àay in a

138

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

fog, 'e'll get one of us," Bonesey said, "unless we
get 'ira first. I'm goin' to shoot 'ira in the next
fight, Mascot, providin' the chance cornes me
But Spike's chance didn't corne in Flanders,
though we fought there for a full week longer,
driving them back mile after mlle, taking the
heart out of them till they wanted to fight no more
and wished they had never crossed the Rhine.

CHAPTER XXII

Victims of the Huns

Many a lad was missing from our Company
when we went on the march again. Some were
lying under the daisies in Flanders, some were
among the wounded in the hospitals, and a few
were in German prison camps, for the Huns, even
though we had given them a hard beating, had
managed to round up a few prisoners now and
then.
We filed out one night from the trenches where
the big battle had been fought, and took the road
to the south. The dreadful tains were over, the
stars were all out, and we were a jolly lot as we
swung along, out packs on out backs, singing and
joking into France.
For the next few days we were on the go a
good part of the time, headed for we didn't know
where, but into another battle as likely as not.
We were going through a country the Germans
had just left, and the marks of the brutes were
everywhere--houses blown to pieces, churches
battered by shells, orchards chopped down, crops
ruined. But the people were the saddest sight--
the old men and women and children who had lost
their homes.

4o THE FIGHTING MASCOT
Toward the end of the first day we were march-
ing along in the dust under a scorching hot sun,
and our water-bottles were empty. We had corne
a long way through the heat, and our tongues
were dry with thirst. We came to a pool of water
beside the road, and some of the soldiers ran up
and drank from it, though the water was warm
and muddy. More of us were about to try it, but
the officers stopped us. They said the Germans
had been there only a short rime before, and that
they might have put poison in the pool, that being
a favourite trick of theirs.
When the lads who had drunk the water heard
that they began to worry. And they had reason
to, for soon they all turned terribly sick, and one
dropped dead in the road.
Our officers sent men back to warn the regi-
ments that were following us, and it was well they
did. When our men got to the pool the Bedford-
shires had just come up toit, and some of them
were on their knees beside it about to drink when
they got the warning.
When we turned into the fields beside the road
that evening to spend the night, I caught sight of
the fat bomber who had been squatting over the
steel door of the dug-out where the Germans were
trapped in the battle of Flanders. He was lying
on the grass now smoking a cigarette, and I went
up to him and asked him what had happened to
those Huns.
"We waited a full hour for them," he said,

VICTIMS OF THE HUNS 4 
"and then they lifted the bloomin' door a bit, and
we dropped the presents we 'ad for them through
the crack. There may be bits of Germans lyin'
round there yet."
The bomber and I slept side by side that night,
and before morning I was sorry I hadn't chosen
some other spot, for he had a way of waking up
from time to time and poking me with his foot to
get me to listen to something he had done in the
line of blowing Huns to pieces. I never took a
fancy to those bombers. They were good lads to
keep away from, for there was never any telling
whether they had the stuff hidden about them-
selves somewhere; and it went off by accident
sometimes.
When we got to La Bass6e the big church
there was full of wounded soldiers. It was in that
church that we saw something that turned me
cold--the most dreadful sight of ail the awful
things we had seen. One of the nurses in charge
of the wounded was a Sister of Mercy who came
forward to welcome us. An officer held out his
hand to her, but she drew back from him and
shook her head. Then she lifted her arms for
him to see. Both hands had been cut off by the
Huns. As I stared at her I thought of what the
Fusilier had told us, when we came to Ypres, of
what devils the German soldiers were, and I knew
then that he had been right when he said it was
doing the Lord's work to kill them.
It was like a dreadful dream, that long march of

4 z THE FIGHTING MASCOT
ours from village to village, for every day, almost
every hour, we came to some new sight that sad-
dened us or sent out blood running cold. We had
thought in Flanders that we had seen all the
terrible things that a man could ever lay eyes on,
but what we saw as we went through France was
worse than those battle-fields full of dead men. 1
want to forget most of it. I don't want it to corne
back and haunt me. I don't want it to corne to
me in my dreams or when I am alone in the dark.
One morning, as we were resting beside the road,
a pretty girl, not more than eighteen years old,
came running up to us, and just as she reached us
fell forward into the dust in a faint. Some cold
water was thrown over her face, and before long
her strength came back and she told her story.
She and a young man had been taken prisoners
by the Germans, who had locked them up in a
house, meaning to send them back behind their
lines later. Some German soldiers were there with
them, and a guard was pacing back and forth out-
side. The soldiers found wine in the cellar, and
before long were very drunk. They began to
threaten the two prisoners with their bayonets.
After a rime the soldiers fell asleep, and the girl
and the young man crept to a window and softly
opened it. They saw the guard still pacing back
and forth. The young man got a knot of tire-
wood, and, holding it ready to strike, waited for
him to get to the window. As the guard passed
it the young man struck him on the head with the

VICTIMS OF THE HUNS 43

knot of wood and knocked him senseless. Then
he and the girl climbed out and ran off through
the fields. The girl lost him somewhere in the
dark, and ran on alone. At last, miles away from
where she had escaped, she caught sight of us
beside the road and knew she was saved.
She drew two pieces of bread from her dress,
and told us they were ail that she had left to keep
her from starving. Her home was gone, her
parents had been killed by the shell that destroyed
it, and she had nothing in the world but the
clothes she wore and those two pieces of bread.
Our Captain gave her a little money, and sent
her down the line to be turned over to the care of
the Royal Garrison Artillery.
A little later we came to a farm-house full of old
men, women, and children whose homes had been
destroyed. A very old man with a white beard
owned the farm-house, and had lived there alone.
Then the Germans came and destroyed almost all
the houses in the neighbourhood. Whenever the
old man heard of a homeless family he sent for
them and took them in under his roof, until now
almost all his neighbours were there. It was a
big house, and he had enough wine and wheat-
cakes to keep them all from starving for a time.
When the Germans came the old man was away
on a visit to Amiens. On his return he found
that his daughter and his grandchildren had been
killed by the soldiers, and he was all alone in the
world. Then he made a vow that ail the rest of

44 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
his life he would help his homeless neighbours,
and that his home should always be theirs until
they could build new homes of their own.
Glad I was when at last we heard the big shells
screeching over our heads again. We could forget
then all that we had seen and heard on the march
through the land of tears. That is what I heard
one of our officers call it--the land of tears. And
I know he was right.
We had no more than heard our first shell when
along came that funeral-faced Welshman we had
known at Ypres, and I knew there was trouble in
the wind. What he was doing down there I don't
know to this day, for there wasn't a sign of his
regiment, but there he was ail alone and as gloomy
as ever.
" Hey, there, 'Ard Luck !" Bonesey sang out.
"You forgot something. 'Ow is it yer wasn't
predictin' that rain and mud and fighting' we got
into down by the River Lys ?"
Old Hard Luck stopped for half a minute, and
called after us as we passed him.
" Now, I'm tellin' you," he said, "there's goin'
to be trouble down where you're goin'."
That was all we heard, and we had to wait till
we got there to find out what the trouble was
to be.

CHAPTER XXIII

An Enemy Leaves Us

Louder and louder the big guns spoke as we
moved on into the south, and we thought the
Boches must have ruade up their minds to get
even for the beating we had given them in Flan-
ders. We passed regiments that had just corne
out of battle, and they told us Fritzie was as busy
as a bee all along the front as far as Arras. Now
and then on the road we got a bad dose of his
shell-fire, so we knew we must be marching along
the edge of his main line, and that at any hour he
might more forward and attack us or that we
might be sent in after him.
At one spot the shells were falling in the road,
and we had to move out through the fields. I t
was while we were crossing those farms that the
Boche artillery got the range on us and killed some
of our men.
Then a shell struck a few steps away from me
and burrowed into the ground under my feet.
The explosion sent me up into the air, and when I
fell the flying earth came down and buried me deep.
Some of the lads set to work with shovels trying
to dig me out, and if they hadn't worked fast I
should have been done for. They dug down till they

t46 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
came to one of my feet, and they pulled me out by
the leg. I was hall dead, and it took some time to
bring me back to lire, but they doctored me up and
I was as sound as ever. I hadn't got a scratch.
" ¥ou weren't ruade to get killed, Mascot," said
Billy. " If the Boches had a bullet with your
number you'd bave got it by this time, with all the
fighting you've been through, and it's the saine
way with me. There's no bullets with our num-
bers, Mascot, and we'll both pull through this
bloomin' war alive."
I began to think the same thing myself after all
the close squeezes I had had. Many a lad in our
Company had got the idea in his head that he
couldn't be killed because he had corne through
so much fighting without a scratch. But I wasn't
so sure myself. I had known a chap who had
been in the war ever since the battle of the Marne,
and because he had been lucky he, too, had got the
notion that there was no bullet with his number.
The idea ruade him brave and reckless, and he
took all kinds of chances. But there was a bullet
with his number after all, and it got him at last in
the battle of Flanders.
Soon we got into the fighting again, but it wasn't
in the trenches this time. We found the Boches
in a village, where, as they lay hidden in the
cellars of ruined bouses, they fired at us with
machine-guns. Our artillery 9pened up on them,
and then we went in with the bayonets. They
raked the streets with their machine-gun tire, and

AN ENEMY LEAVES US 47

we had to shelter ourselves behind the broken
walls of the buildings. Then we would run out
when the firing died down, and charge them. We
cleaned them out of one cellar after another. It
was like fighting rats in a pit, and it was just like
rats that they squealed when they round the
British terriers jumping in on top of them and
giving them the cold steel.
There was one cellar on top of a little fise in
the ground where the Boches gave us the hardest
work of ai1. They had several machine-guns with
them, and they were behind broken stone walls
that were a foot thick. Two or three times they
drove us back, and it looked as if we should bave
to lose many men before getting them. Our
officers called us off after a time.
" I'm goin' to get those blighters meself," I
heard the fat bomber say. He had a talk with
out Captain and then disappeared. The next rime
I saw him he was crawling along on his stomach
behind some piles of broken stones. From there
he crept into a patch of long grass on the slope
leading up to the cellar where the Boches lay. A
few minutes later he tan forward, right in front of
the muzzles of their guns. It was the bravest
deed I had ever seen. In a moment he was up
on the cellar wall.
Then there came a crash, followed by another
almost in the same second. A cloud of smoke and
dirt rose up, and we gave a yell and charged.
There wasn't a man left to meet us--only the dead

148 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
and wounded--but just outside the wall we round
the fat bomber crouching low and nursing an ugly
cut in his forehead.
There was still some fighting going on in other
parts of the village, but it didn't last long. We
passed big groups of Hun prisoners, and more
were running in all the time with their hands
raised and calling " Kamerad !"
Then we began the search for our dead and
wounded, and there were many of them, for the
machine-guns had been pouring a dreadful tire
into us.
It was then, as I was helping in the search, that
I round, lying beside a cellar wall, a lad whose face
I thought I knew, though it was covered with
blood and dirt. He was still alive, and just able
to call out feebly for help, but he was going fast.
" Blimey!" he whispered, as I bent over him.
" So it's you, ye little imp !"
Then I knew him. It was Spike.
" 'Old me up, matie," he pleaded in a voice so
weak I could hardly hear him. "I knows I'm
goin', for it's gettin' dark."
The sun was shining down on us, but I knew
the light was going out for him for good and all.
" I 'opes the Lord may forgive me for the black
deeds l've done," he mumbled. "Take me 'and,
matie, and say there's no 'ard feelin's before I
goes."
So I took his hand, and the next moment his
eyes closed and I heard a rattle in his throat.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Fight in the Stone House

Very often in the trenches or on the march I
thought of the far-away Treasure Island nights
in my room at home, and I would say to myself,
"Tommy, you never expected then that some day
you'd be going Jim Hawkins one better, did you
now ?"
I bring in Jim Hawkins again because I am
drawing near to an adventure that has reminded
me ever since of the liveliest part of that boys'
story, the pirates' attack on the block-house.
Many times at home I had dreamed about that
block-house fight, and of course in the dream I
wasn't Tommy Kehoe but the Hawkins boy.
Dreams like that don't corne truc once in a million
rimes, but mine did. Only in my case the heroes
were outside and the villains within. But our
block-house fight made the crowd on Treasure
Island seem like blooming swabs.
We were marching cheerily along toward Arras,
and must have been about six mlles from the
town. It was four o'clock of a warm, sunny after-
noon. Out throats were dry and out stomachs

50 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

empty; but our hearts were light enough, for we
were looking forward to bully-beef, biscuits, and
tea, and perhaps a fine, hot stew at the end of the
day's march, and a good sleep beside the road.
Some of the lads were singing, and Billy Matchett
and I were talking of what we might expect in
the way of fighting at Arras.
In front of us, between bare fields, lay a long
stretch of white road. Far off near the sky-line
stood a gloomy-looking stone house. As we came
nearer we saw that the windows were all smashed,
and the roof torn by shells. There wasn't a sign
of lire about it, and I thotght that whoever had
lived there must have deserted it long ago.
I can't say what it was about that dismal house
that aroused my curiosity, for we had passed many
a building that had been battered by shells, but
for some reason I couldn't keep my eyes from
it. There was something uncanny about the
place, and l've learned that often when things
are wrong, while seeming to be all right, there's
something he can't explain inside a man that tells
him so.
We were within perhaps a hundred yards of the
house when I thought I saw a man's head appear
in one of the broken windows. The next moment
came the dreadful click-click-click-click that we all
had heard so often. Machine-guns! They were
being fired from those windows.
"Typewriters!" cried Billy, his eyes growing
big.

FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 151

The saine instant a man right in front of him
fell forward and lay still. I saw two more drop
before we could fall into position.
In less than a minute we were lined up along
the road, the front line lying fiat on their stomachs,
the line behind them on their knees, and the men
in the rear standing up, and then our bullets began
to patter against the walls of the house like a
hailstorm. But those Germans were very well
protected, and had had plenty of time to make ail
their arrangements for defending themselves before
opening tire on us.
More of our men fell. It didn't look as if we
could stay there much longer without being badly
shot up. But there was no cover in sight. We
might have fallen back out of range and waited
for the artillery to come up, but I suppose our
officers wouldn't have cared to bave the house
shelled. Of course, as always, they must have
wanted to take some prisoners. Prisoners are
valuable, because often the officers can squeeze
useful information out of them. There wouldn't
have been any live prisoners left if the artillery
had got to work. And, besides, the artillery
might be hours away for all we knew.
The men spread out all around the house, and
Fritzie didn't find us so easy to hit after that.
We kept on pumping shot at them, hoping to
throw such a hot tire through the windows that the
machine-gunners would have to go out of business.
I think we did put one or two of their guns out of
{c97)

i5 . THE FIGHTING MASCOT

action, but at least one was still going, and now
and then one of our men would fall.
The fight had been going on quite a time when
one of out officers, who had been skirmishing
about through the fields, came back with the news
that he bad found a big log, and some of the men
went with him to get it. They came back in a
few minutes lugging it along with them. It was
the trunk of a tree, fifteen or twenty feet long and
at least a foot thick.
Right away we saw what was in the wind.
That log was going to be used as a battering ram.
A squad of men got hold of it and went charging
down the road as fast as they could go, yelling
like savages. In front of them, with a good grip
on the end of the log, was old Bonesey, the ex-
burglar, on the way to the best bit of housebreaking
he had ever done in his life, while Martin, the
Scotland Yard man, was running along behind
keeping an eye on him.
AIl of us who were still on that side of the
house went tearing after them. The machine-gun
bullets were spattering ail around us in the dust,
but we didn't care. It was a brand-new kind
of adventure, and we were wild to get into it.
On the match my feet had dragged as if they had
been weighted down with lead, but I had forgotten
all about being tired, and raced along like a two-
year-old just out of the paddock. Fighting in the
trenches was about as exciting as a prayer-meeting
compared to this.

FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 53

Old Bonesey and the rest of the crowd with the
rare were making a bee line for the front door of
the house. One of them dropped dead when they
were within thirty yards of it, but the rest kept on
without so much as hesitating, and came up against
the door at full speed. The big log struck it
square in the centre. There was a tremendous
crash, and the whole door flew into pieces.
Hall a dozen men drove through the broken
door before the splinters had stopped flying. By
the time I got there the ground floor was so
jammed with Huns and Tommies that there wasn't
room to swing a gun.
I think the first men to rush in must bave killed
or wounded a good many of the Germans, but
there were still plenty of them to be accounted for.
It was the liveliest hand-to-hand fighting I had
ever seen. There was scarcely room for bayonet-
work or even for shooting, though now and then
a gun would go off. Our men were using their
knives and their fists. The yells and groans and
occasional shots ruade a terrible noise.
I t wasn't the sort of a mess for me to be getting
into, for I was altogether too small for such close
hand-to-hand work as that, and I couldn't see a
Fritzie in the lot who didn't stand head and
shoulders above me. I had more than one chance
to knife one of them in the back, but doing that is
too much like Fritzie's own style of fighting.
I say there wasn't room to swing a gun, but
there was one exception. In the corner of the

54 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
room stood a big Prussian who was using the butt
of his gun as a club, and nobody could get near
him. He could have been shot, of course, but
either nobody cared to tire at him or nobody
thought of it. I think it must have been the fun
of a hand-to-hand fight with him that kept them
from shooting. His gun was swinging like the
sail of a windmill in a gale, and a Tommy with his
knife in his hand who tried to crawl under it was
knocked fiat.
At this the big Hun gave a roar like a lion, and
began to bellow names at us. He called us pigs,
and probably a good many worse things, too, but
it didn't hurt our feelings much since we couldn't
understand more than one word in ten.
"Put the steel to 'ira! Put the steel to 'ira!"
The whole roomful of us was yelling and push-
ing and struggling to get near.
A moment later one of our lads jabbed at him
with a bayonet, but Fritzie parrîed it, and sent the
Tommy's gun flying against the wall. It must
have been two or three minutes that he held
everybody off. Then a Tommy made a spring
for him, as quick as a cat, and drove a knife into
him. Fritzie's gun dropped with a crash to the
floor, and he fell on top of it.
The big room in which all this fighting took
place covered almost all the ground floor, but
there was a little adjoining room, and I saw some
of the Tommies standing at the door and looking
into it. I squeezed in among them, and there

FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 55
before us lay a man, a woman, and a baby stone
dcad. They had been stabbed with bayonets. I
never felt so much like fighting as when I saw
that little baby lying there. Old Bonesey was in
the group at the door, and, though he as well as
all of us had seen many dreadful things before
that day, there were big tears running down his
face. He wasn't a bad sort of a burglar after all,
poor old Bonesey.
By that time the fighting on that floor was over.
There wasn't a live German left on it who wasn't
wounded, but several had jumped through the
windows, and had been captured by men watching
outside. But there was a staircase running down
along the wall of the big room, and two men
among several who had tried to climb it had been
shot down by Germans who were lying fiat on the
upper landing.
A dozen Tommies ruade a rush for the stairs,
but the Germans, lying well sheltered on the floor
at the top, shot down into the thick of the crowd,
hitting three or four, and sending the rest back to
cover. It began to look as if four or rive Fritzies
could hold those stairs against a regiment.
For a moment after that last rush for the stairs
ail the noise died down, and we heard from the
floor above a sound that ruade us all stand still and
listen. It was a queer, whimpering cry. We
knew no man would cry like that. It might have
been a woman, but it sounded more like a child.
"The devils!" snarled a man in front of me

56 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
under his breath, and sprang for the stairs. Just
in time somebody pulled him back. It would
have been sure death for him if he had gorle a few
steps more. It was Bonesey who showed us how
to do it. Housebreaking was just in his line, and
he knew exactly how to go about the work that
lay before us. He whispered a few words to a
sergeant, and then rushed outdoors. Most of us
followed him.
" Keep your bloomin' mouths shut!" warned
the Sergeant as we went out.
We followed Bonesey around to the rear of
the bouse. There we saw him climbing to the
shoulders of a Tommy who stood against the
pillar of a porch, whose roof jutted out from
under the second-story windows. H e went up
to the roof like a monkey, with the test of us
after him as fast as we could get there. Then
we ruade a rush for the windows. With the
points of their bayonets the men in front drove
the Germans back and jumped into the house.
I got there just behind the first rush, and the
way out men were cleaning out those Germans
was a sight a man isn't likely to set eyes on once
in a lifetime, unless he's bore lucky.
Right in the centre of the big room--there
was only one room on that floor--a Tommy had
gripped a Hun by the throat, and was strangling
the life out of him. Arlother Fritzie krlocked
me fiat as he fell over me with a knife thrust
clean through him. Out men hadn't forgotten

FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 57
what they had seen in the little room downstairs,
and they were not taking any more prisoners.
They were not letting any more go wounded
either. They meant quick death for every Hun
in sight, and that place was a slaughter-house
for a few minutes.
Then came a rush of feet on the stairs. The
Tommies below had been listening to the fight-
ing, and hadn't been able to hold themselves back
any longer. Two or three shots rang out as
the Germans on the landing fired down into them,
but it would bave taken artillery to have stopped
that maddened crowd. They drove the Germans
at the top back into the room, and came piling
in after them.
Suddenly, as all that mass of fighting men
drove in on us, came a frightful crash. The
whole house seemed to be going to pieces. The
shell-torn roof had fallen in on us, and we were
half buried in the ruins. The air was so full
of flying dust and splinters and plaster that we
could scarcely see.
The falling timbers had knocked me off my
feet. I picked myself up, sound enough except
for a few bruises, and looked around me, wonder-
ing whether anybody but myself had been left
alive in ail that wreckage. Then I saw Tommies
everywhere rubbing the dust and plaster out of
their eyes, and most of them unhurt, though one
had been killed by a falling beam, and several
were badly cut and bruised.

158

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

Dead Germans were everywhere in the ruin.
As I stood there half dazed I thought of the
whimpering cry we had heard when in the room
below, and wondered what it could have been.
For a moment I could see nothing but the
Tommies and the dead Germans. Then, in a
dark corner, I saw two girls cowering close to-
gether on the floor. One looked to be not more
than fourteen years old, and the other a year or
two younger. They looked as if they were ready
to faint with fright, and there was a half-mad
stare in their big, dark eyes. Ail the ghastly
work that had been done in that room as they
crouched there must have seemed like a terrible
dream to them.
We got them out of that awful place as soon
as we could. Out in the fields, in the bright
sunshine, a little colour came back into their
cheeks, and after a little time they became less
frightened, and were able to talk with us.
They told us that just before we had appeared
on the road the Germans had killed their father,
mother, and baby sister. The Germans had
been drinking, and acted like madmen. They
began to break open wine casks in the cellar,
and became worse than ever.
A little later the London Scottish Regiment
came in sight, and we turned the little girls over
to them. Then we marched on.

CHAPTER XXV

An Old Pal " Goes West"

In the time when I read creepy stories at
home, and dreamed about them afterward in the
night, it seemed strange to wake up and find
myself in my quiet room, with the sun shining
in at the window, so soon after being on some
wild island, or hiding aboard ship from mutineers.
Blind Pew would be gripping my arm, or Long
John Silver holding a gun at my head; then,
quick as a flash, they would fade away--and
there I would be, in bed, looking out through
the window at the roofs.
I t was the same sort of a feeling I had as we
marched away from that stone house, while the
sun was shining on the fields, and the birds were
singing all around us, and everything was so
quiet and peaceful. It seemed as if I must have
dreamed the dreadful things that had been hap-
penlng only a few minutes before. I turned my
head for a last look at the place, half thinking
it might have faded away, as those dreams had
done at home. But there it was against the
sky, the gloomiest, creepiest- looking house I
should ever care to see. It seemed then more
139

160 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

dreadful than before, with its broken roof and
its dark empty windows, for I knew there was
blood trickling down its stairs, and that there
were dead men lying on the floors.
Out between those fields the war seemed very
far away, for there wasn't a sound but the birds
and the voices of the soldiers. Our wagons,
which sometimes ruade such a rumbling and
rattling, were far off in the rear. Almost always
there had been the sound of distant firing, but
now we heard not a gun.
"'Twould be nice, to my way of thinkin', if
we should find the bloomin' war hall over, and
'ear they was sendin' us back to Blighty," said
Bonesey, who was marching beside me. " I'm
tired of the fightin', Mascot. I want to get back
to Blighty, and 'ear the noises in the streets, and
see the people goin' by, and drop in at a pub for
a swig o' beer. 'Alf dead I am for a glass o' good
o1' Lunnon beer down me throat."
" It's my morning tub I'm dying for," put in
Billy. "I haven't had a bath in a week, and
there's the blood of one of those bloomin' Huns
back there on my hands this minute. Perhaps
we'll corne to a brook soon."
" Yer must 'ave some fish blood in yer," Bonesey
grumbled. "Never 'are I 'eard of a bloke so
fond of sousin' 'imself in water."
"Give us a song, Billy," I said, "and you'll
forget about the morning tub."
So he gave us some old-timers, "Silk Hat

AN OLD PAL "GOES WEST" 161

Tony", "The Lights o' London", and "The
Girl from Dundee". Soon there was singing
all along the road--nice, peaceful songs, with no
fighting or trouble in them--as if we hadn't been
putting the bayonets to a houseful of Huns only
a little time before, and losing some of our own
lads while we were doing it.
Out kitchen wagons came up a little later and
gave us our supper beside the road, and we spent
the night there, getting a fine long sleep in the
dry grass, with the stars blinking down at us.
When we woke up in the morning we heard
the guns going to the south of us, and we knew
it might be many a night before we should get
the chance of another such rest.
" Funny 'ow I keeps thinkin' of Blighty, Mas-
cot," said Bonesey, as we ro!led up our blankets.
" I wants to get out o' the fightin' and go back
there w'ere it's peaceful. I'ad a bad dream last
night, and something's goin' to 'appen to me if
I don't."
But the big guns were calling us again, and
there wasn't a chance of going back to Blighty
}'et unless we got hit.
"'Ear them guns," Bonesey grumbled. " Hit's
always them guns, sayin' "Urry up' to us poor
blokes. And we'll 'urry up once too often and
'go west', where there's many a good lad gone
before us who's lyin' under the daisies now."
We got to the edge of Arras that morning, and
the Boches were waiting for us in houses and

62 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

cellars and behind piles of broken stones. Our
artillery was playing on them, but it didn't seem
to do much good. We infantry lads were the
ones for that kind of work. The big guns might
have pounded away there for a month without
cleaning the H uns out from such hiding-places.
So in we went, and it was ticklish work, and
hot to my liking, for we could never tell when
a typewriter was going to shoot at us from a
house or a cellar. Even raiding a trench back
in Flanders, though that was bad enough, seemed
better than this fighting in the streets. We knew
what to expect and what we had to do when we
went over the top and across No Man's Land,
but here we didn't know what kind of trouble
might be waiting for us.
Not so much as the shadow of a German did
we see as we came to the streets, and the place
was as quiet as a graveyard. A hungry-looking
cat crept across the way in front of us, and was
the only living thing in sight. --
O}1, what a place it was! Grass and weeds
growing in the wide cracks of the cobble-stone
paving; heaps of bricks and stones where houses
had stood; rows of bouses still standing, but roof-
less, and with only ugly holes where the windows
had been.
I jumped when I heard the rattle of a machine-
gun, it came so suddenly out of the quiet. Ail at
once the guns begn to play on us from at least
ha}f a dozen places.

AN OLD PAL "GOES WEST" 63

In our first rush we took some cellars from
which the Germans had been shooting at us.
They kept their guns going till our front line
was almost on top of them, and then threw up
their hands, yelling " Kamerad!" But our lads
didn't think they had surrendered soon enough,
and they gave some of them the bayonets by way
of a lesson. Fritzie had a nasty way of keeping
his gun going till the last second and then raising
that " Kamerad" cry, just as if he hadn't been
shooting our men down as long as he could after
he knew his gaine was up.
There came firing from some half-destroyed
houses farther on, and we knew the hardest work
was yet to be done, for the Boches were pro-
tected by stone walls, and there was any number
of hiding-places for their snipers. It was a matter
of crawling along in the shelter of walls and rub-
bish-heaps till we could get near them.
About twenty of us were working our way
through a narrow fane when a bullet hit the
ground a couple of yards in front of me. It
had corne from a little cottage a few yards ahead.
We fired at the windows, and then we ruade a
rush at the place and broke the door down. As
it fell in, a machine-gun began to bark in another
house near by, and, huddled all together as we
were, we were a fine target. Before we could all
dive in through the broken door, the gun got two
of our party, and bored a hole through the helmet
of a third without hurting him.

64 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
lnside, a dead German lay on the floor, but,
except for him, the house seemed to have been
deserted. A corporal bent over the dead man
and felt him.
" He's stone cold," he said. "And, what's
more, there's no gun beside him. So where's
the bloke that shot at us? He can't have gone
out through the back, for our men have been
coming up on that side."
We had a bomber with us, and he went nosing
about to sec if there were any place where he
should drop the stuff he carried. The upper story
had been blown off by shells, so there was only
the floor we were on and the cellar where anyone
might be hiding. We poked about behind piles
of rubbish and into what was left of a closet, and
looked into a broken chimney-hole, but we found
nobody.
" We might take a look in the cellar," I said
to the Corporal.
"And get our heads blown off, like as not," he
answered. "We'll let the lad with the bombs
attend to the cellar. Clear out through the back
while he does the trick."
We went out through the windows into a little
walled court, and watched the bomber creep up to
the door over the cellar stairs. He lifted the door
a foot or two, dropped in a bomb, and rnade a
dive for a window. The explosion shook the
walls, and sent the door flying into splinters.
When the smoke had cleared away the bomber

AN OLD PAL "GOES WEST" 6 5
went back to the stairs, and we followed him
down below into the dark.
"Why, here's a rum go!" the bomber said, as
the Corporal struck a light. There's two cellars
here, with a thick wall between 'em."
A heavy, iron-braced door in the wall had been
burst open by the explosion, and the bomber was
stepping up to it when four men rushed out on us.
The Corporal's light went out, and we were there
in the dark, not knowing who was friend and who
was Hun.
I remember a shiver tan through me after the
light went out, for it was a dreadful thing to be
penned up in a black hole with enemies that
couldn't be seen, and with the thought that any
moment one of them might run a bayonet through
me without my having a chance of dodging or
parrying it. At the same time I heard a scuffle,
then a groan, and the thud of a body falling on
the dirt floor, though there was no telling whether
it was a Hun or one of our own lads who had
dropped.
I t was then that the Corporal did a brave
thing, which no man careful of his life would
have risked in such a situation. He struck
another light.
The same instant a gun went off, and the Cor-
poral, with a cry, let the match drop, for the
bullet had hit him somewhere. But the light had
done its good work, for in the second that it
flared we got sight of the four Boches, one of

166 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

thenq dead or wounded, and we made for the
three that were up and ready for us. When
somebody struck another light they had been
done for. We hadn't lost a man, though the
Corporal was holding up a wounded hand, which
the bullet had struck.
Up from that musty black hole we climbed,
without stopping to waste useful time in bury-
ing the bodies or dragging them along with us,
and it was as good as a drink to a dying man
to be in the light of day again, knowing which
way to turn, and where to strike when the next
shot came.
Tommies were running by in front, so, think-
ing the machine-gun that had fired on us as we
broke through the door must have been silenced
by then, we went out and joined them.
At the end of the lane a wounded man--one
of our own ladskwas dragging himself on his
hands and knees from the doorway of what was
left of a house. Such a common sight were
wounded men that I scarcely noticed him at
first, but, as we drew nearer, I took another look,
and for a moment my heart stopped beating.
" It's poor old Bonesey," said the Corporal.
Yes, it was poor old Bonesey; and badly hurt,
for he was hardly able to more. As we gathered
round him he took no notice of us, and then I
saw that a bullet had struck him near the eyes,
and that he was stone blind.
" It's the Mascot, old pal," I said, as I bent

AN OLD PAL "GOES WEST" 67

over him. "We're going to take you along with
US."
" No use of that, little man," he answered, "for
I'm goin' fast, and ye 'ad best let me die 'ere as
elsewhere. Gimme a drink of water, Matie; just
enough to moisten me pipes, for l'm burnin' up."
Though it was against orders to give water to
a wounded man, I let a few drops from my bottle
trickle into his mouth--hardly enough to swallow
---and it seemed to do him a lot of good.
" Many a time me old mother 'as told me I'd
be shot sooner or later sneakin' into somebody's
'ouse," he said. "And 'ere it's corne true--down
'ere in France. But there's no job for Scotland
Yard in it."
A spell of coughing stopped him, and seemed
to shake out of him all the little strength he had
left, but he found his voice again after a moment.
"There's the address of the girl back 'ome, that
l've told yer about, in me pay-book, lad. Send
'er a line sayin' I was a good soldier and died
servin' me country, will yer?"
Then he went west, where the good soldiers go,
and I had lost as fine a friend as a lad ever had.

(c 976) 12

CI-IAPTER XXVI

Into the Trenches Agaii

l.ittle time there was to mourn for my old pal,
for our l]len were moving on, cleaning out the
Boche nests iia front of us, while the stretcher-
bearers were hard at work picking up the wounded
and the dead.
We pressed on, with the Germans running and
scattering before us, and my fighting-blood was up
as we picked them off when they showed in the
open. One of them I got, by way of helping to
square accounts for what they had done to Bone-
sey; though how is the death of a Hun, or of
many of them, to balance against the loss of a
good British soldier?
AIl the test of that day we were fighting, and
ail of the next, till there wasn't a fighting German
left. Then we had a little rest and quiet, and we
ruade ourselves comfortable in the bouses that
were still standing.
Four days later, when we were beginning to
feel at home, the German artillery shelled us and
drove us out. Then their infantry swarmed in
and took our places. But we didn't leave them
long in comfort. As we had dole before, we
drove them before tts from house to bouse at'd
1158

INTO THE TRENCHES AGAIN 169

from cellar to cellar. Day after day we fought
there, and when we were through we had rive
hundred German prisoners, to say nothing of ail
their dead and wounded. Their dead lay every-
where, in streets and houses and cellars and
yards, and it was a long job getting rid of them.
We turned out prisoners over to the Bedford-
shires, and marched away, for we had had all we
could stand of fighting for a while. For rive
days we rested in a big field, i slept în a hay-
stack, and it was the finest bed I had had since
leaving England.
Oh, those were days to remember! We had
better meals than we had ever had belote, and we
dug potatoes, and boiled them in their jackets.
We round a brook, where we bathed, and Billy
grew cheerful again. We raked the cooties from
out shirts, and washed out clothes and hung them
up to dry. We got out hair cut, for it had grown
so long that we looked like savages, and soon we
ruade such a fine showing that nobody would have
thought of calling us the Scruffy Fifth. In the
evenings we had concerts, and some of the lads
gave a play. We could hear heavy firing toiles
away, to remind us that the war was still going on,
but no shells came out way, and out troubles were
over for a time.
"'Ow would a chicken dinner appear to yer,
Mascot?" said Piccadilly one morning. " I got
me blinkers on a fine fat rooster a while back
about a mlle from 'ere, and I'm thinkin' 'e's better

7o THE FIGHTING MASCOT
in out stomachs than roamin' loose. 'Elp me
catch the blighter and I'll give yer 'alf of 'im."
We found the rooster sitting on a fence, watch-
ing us out of the corners of his eyes, and he was
such a fine, fat bird it made me hungry to look at
him.
" I'll cluck at 'im," Piccadilly said, "and 'e may
come. 'E looks like a sociable bloke."
Piccadilly clucked; but the rooster just sat there
blinking at us.
"'E don't hunderstand English," said Picca-
dilly. "A little talkin' of French at 'ira and 'e'd
come.
He tried the few French words he knew, but
the rooster didn't more, and at last Piccadilly made
a jump for him. The rooster flew off the fence
and ruade off through the fields, with us after him.
A lively runner that bird was, and we must have
chased him for a mlle. Then Piccadilly got him
by the leg, and we made off with him.
That evening I gave a bit of my share to Billy,
and it seemed like the best meal we had ever had
in our lires. After that we kept our eyes out for
chickens, but we never found another.
Sunday came while we were there in the field,
and we had our first church service in months. It
was a fine sight, all those Tommies on their knees
out there in the open, thanking the Lord for
bringing them through the fighting alive, though
it was little we knew whether the next week might
hOt be our last.

INTO THE TRENCHES AGAIN 71

I t was to be the last for some of us, as it turned
out, for the next day we made a ten-mile march
and went into the trenches and the fighting.
These trenches had been lined with cement by
the Germans, and were the finest we had ever seen;
yet we didn't fare so well in them as we had done
in Flanders, except that there was no mud to speak
of. They were just as full of rats, bigger rats than
those at Ypres and a good deal more dangerous,
for they were the biting kind. After we heard
that they had nipped the throats of four men, who
had died from the poison of the bites, we feared
the things far more than we did the Germans.
A queer lad we met out there in front of Arras.
He was the son of a rich baronet, and had been
driving "shakers", which is the naine we had for
motor-cars. He was such a wild driver that he
had put more than thirty of them out of business,
he told us, but had corne through every accident
without a scratch. So unlucky he had been with
the shakers that they had made him a stretcher-
bearer, which is no less dangerous a job.
" l've been in the war ever since it began," he
said, "and all those three years l've been trying
to get a wound so I could get back to Blighty.
But l've been unlucky. No matter how hard I try
to get hit, there's no bullet with my number. A
hundred times l've been out between the lines with
the bullets flying all around me, yet here I am,
with nothing to show for it, and getting more
home-sick all the time."

172 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

One evening our Captain told us that at twelve
o'clock that night we were going over the top.
That had become an old story, and it didn't worry
us. After all the fine rest we had had we were in
fighting trim and eager for trouble. At  1.4o we
were ready and waiting, and most of the lads
braced themselves with a couple of drams of tire-
water. Sharp when the hour came we went over.
We ran into the heaviest kind of firing, and lost
a good many men on the way. A bullet struck
Piccadilly's helmet and knocked him over, but he
was up again unhurt the next moment. The Ger-
mans climbed out of their trench to meet us, and
we went into them fast and hard. But after a few
minutes we had won their trench and a lot of
prisoners with it, and it had been easy work.
Our prisoners told us they were tired of the war.
$ome of them hadn't liked it even when it began,
and they were not the soldier kind. One was a
solemn-faced, middle-aged chap with big spec-
tacles, whom we called the professor. He had
been a piano teacher in Germany, and he said
the sight of blood ruade him sick. He was a
gentle old boy, and it made me laugh to think of
him trying to kill anybody with his bayonet. He
had surrendered without even putting up a fight.
But we knew too much about Kaiser Bill's army
to think that many of them were such easy ones,
though our hardest lesson from them was still
ahead of us.

CHAPTER XXVII

I Meet " Israel Hands"

Now I come to a time when the luck that had
brought so many of us through alive and unhurt
would have little more to do with the Fighting
Fifth; a rime that makes me wonder, when I look
back upon it, that I am here among the living
instead of lying under the daisies in France, where,
by ail but one of a thousand chances, I should be
to-day.
The German lines grew stronger and stronger
as we lay there before them, and their artillery
gave us no rest day or night. And yet we were
to go forward. Those were the orders. We were
to go forward, no matter what the cost, and we
knew that many a lad of ours would go west
before the fighting there was over.
For hours at a rime the shells flew over our
heads or dropped among us, while we crouched on
our knees in the bottom of the trench with our
hands over our eyes, thinking every minute would
be our last. The shell-fire shook our nerves and
took the heart out of us. It wouldn't let us sleep,
and sometimes it wouldn't let us eat, for in the

174 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
thick of it bringing the food up from the cook-
bouses was a job too hard to handle. We thanked
our stars when our own artillery grew strong and
gave the Huns shell for shell, though we knew
that that meant the time was nearer when we
should bave to go over the top into the hardest
fighting of ail.
At last the German tire grew weaker, and our
own big uns began to bellow worse than ever.
They were clearing the way for us poor Tommies,
and giving us a chance against death. The sound
of them was like music then, for we knew that
every bark they gave ruade easier work for us, and
perhaps another gap or two in the trenches lying
ahead.
Then the day came when we were told we were
going in. And we were going in by the light of
day, a grey day, to be sure, but much too clear to
please us. Four-forty was the time set, and we
went over the top on the minute.
The Huns were ready for us, and they gave us
such a dose of shells and bullets as I had never
gone through before. We were not through our
fences when the lads began to drop, and one went
down who was running shoulder to shoulder with
me. He was a lad I knew well, but there was no
chance to stop and help him or even to make sure
whether he was dead or wounded. It was every
man shift for himself, and it was lie there and
surfer and wait for the stretcher-bearers when
you fell wounded, or perhaps for a German to

I MEET "ISRAEL HANDS" 175

run a bayonet through you if we were beaten
back.
A hot, stinging blow, a bullet cutting through
the skin of my forehead, staggered me, and blood
came trickling down over my face. I ran on, but
the bullets were flying so thick that I couldn't see
a chance of getting across. Dead and wounded
men were everywhere, and the Fighting Fifth
would be lucky if it wasn't wiped out. The blood
half blinded me, and I began to feel afraid, for I
knew that if I couldn't keep my eyes clear I should
stand a small chance when it came to the hand-to-
hand work.
Half-way across a bullet hit me in the thigh,
and I fell. I felt no pain to amount to much, but I
couldn't move. Our lads ran on and left me, and
from where I lay I watched them being mowed
down.
Then I saw their line break and some come
back, but the rest ran on into what looked like
sure death. As they drew near the trench the
Germans came over the top with a yell, and went
at them. Our lads were outnumbered three to
one, but they fought till the last one of them was
down or captured.
The Huns came on, tramplinff on the dead and
wounded, and I was lucky to escape their feet as
they passed me. I saw them driving what were
left of our men back into the trench, and I went
cold as I thought of the bloody work they were
doing with the bayonets to our poor lads.

176 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
I was growing dizzy and weak, and oh, what a
thirst I had! There was water in my bottle, but
I didn't have the strength to lift it to my lips.
Near by was a wounded man dragging himself
along with his arms, for his legs had gone bad.
Close beside me he stopped, his strength going
fast.
" I ean't go another yard, matie," he whispered,
"and I'm done for. We're all done for, those of
us that are out here, for the Huns will be back
presently, a,d it's small pity they show to the
wounded. They'll fix us with their bayonets, like
as not. l've seen them do that to the wounded
more than OllCe,"
I asked him for a drink. Little I cared then
what the Huns might do to us; all I could think
about was water. My life I would have given
that moment, I think, for one swallow of cold
water, and the bottle hanging by his side drove me
half mad. He tried to raise himself up on his
elbows again that he might crawl to me, but he
was too weak to manage it.
" I can't do it, matie," he said. " I can't even
reach the old bottle, and I'm half dead for a drink
myself."
He was silent for a time, but before long I heard
him groaning, and calling for water in a voice that
was not above a whisper.
|t grew dark, and the stars came out. The man
beside me was gasping for air and now and then
muttering to himself. I la), staring up at the sky,

I MEET "ISRAEL HANDS" I77
and it seemed as if there were a tire inside of me
burning me up. After a lo,g time I heard steps,
and some Germans passed by a few yards off.
They prowled about in plain sight, and as I watched
them, hot caring whether they round me or left me
to lie there and thirst, I saw the dreadful thing
happen that I had heard of so often. They were
running their bayonets into the wounded.
A cold shiver went through me, and the sky
and the shell-holes and craters and the far-off hills
began to go round and round.
Then the stars went out, and 1 was back home,
sitting up in bed reading about Jim Hawkins, and
hurrying over the pages for fear my mother would
eome stealing in and take the candle away.
After a time the room dropped away into the
dark, and I was Jim Hawkins himself, 'sitting on
the cross-trees of the good ship Hispaniola, with
Israel Hands below me coming up the mizzen-
shrouds holding a dirk in his teeth.
"Jim," says he, " I reckon we're fouled, you and
me, and we'll have to sign articles. I'd bave had
you but for that there lurch; but I don't bave no
luck, hOt I; and I reckon I'll bave to strike, which
cornes hard for a master-mariner to a ship's
younker like you, J ira."
Ail in a breath his hand went back over his
shoulder, and the dirk sung through the air.
Of a sudden Israel Hands' red cap changed
to a helmet, and the dirk became the butt of
a gun. The gun-butt struck me on top of the

178 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
head, I felt a stinging pain, and everything went
black.
I came to in a dug-out hospital, where an M.O.
--a medical officer--and a woman nurse were
standing beside me.
" How goes the fighting ?" I asked.
" Suppose you keep your mouth shut and lie
quiet," the M.O. answered. "You've been raving
about the fighting ever since we got you, and it's
better you should think of something else."
The nurse spoke a few words to him in French.
" I'll tell you this much," said the M.O., as he
turned to me again ; "your battalion came back at
the Huns and fought like wild-cats. They cleaned
the devils out, and, after driving them back where
they came from, took a good part of their first line
away from them. They've more than ruade up for
getting beaten, and they are the proudest men in
the army to-day."
"And then the stretcher-bearers picked me
up?"
" No ; a nurse found you--a French woman.
She carried you in herself. You had been lying
out there forty-eight hours, and we thought you
were done for when we got you here. There's a
nasty scratch over your eyes, a wound in your
thigh, and a dent in your head from the butt of a
gun; but you needn't worry. You'll pull through
in time."
I went under an operation a few minutes later,
and twenty-four hours passed before I came back

I MEET "ISRAEL HANDS" 179

to consciousness. A nurse asked me where I
lived, and I tried to answer, but I found I couldn't
say a word. For two days and nights I lay with-
out speaking; then suddenly my speech came baek
to me.
" How goes the fighting ?" I asked.
"We're giving the Germans heIl," said the
M.O.

CHAPTER XXVIII

" Good-Bye, old Pals
"¥ou're going back to Blighty," the M.O. told
me a few hours later.
"When ?"
". Oh, in two or three days you will be on the
way."
" How goes the fighting now ?"
"Our line is still moving forward. ¥our Fight-
ing Fifth bas carried another trench, I hear.
They deserve their name, those lads, for they've
done great work. "fou should be proud you were
one of them."
I could feel every nerve in me tingle as I heard
him praise our brave old battalion. Small need
there was of his saying I should be proud to be
one of them. There wasn't a prouder lad in the
army.
As I lay there in the dug-out listening to the
artillery, I wondered how many we had lost and
whether any of my pals had fallen. More wounded
were being brought in, but the few I managed to
see I didn't recognize. Before many hours the big
180

"GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!" 8

guns stopped booming, and I knew the fighting
must be over for a time.
I had been in the dug-out three days when the
M.O. told me that before night they were going
to start me off toward Blighty. I didn't want to
go without seeing some of my pals, and I told him
so. The M.O. shook his head. He said he
didn't see how it would be possible. But, a little
before the time came for me to start, in came Billy,
M'Bride, and Piccadilly. I don't know how they
managed it, but there they were, just as much
alive as ever. I told them I was going back to
Blighty.
" Never mind. Mascot," the Yankee lad said.
" You WOla't miss much, for the war is soon going
to be over. The Americans are coming in, and
that'll settle it. Why, son, I knov regiments back
in New York that could lick their weight in wild-
cats. Ever hear of the Seventh or the Sixty-
ninth ? Believe me, Kaiser Bill will yell for help
when he sees them coming for him."
" If you're a fair sample, 'ow is it you turned
tail so quick w'en the Germans was drivin' us
back ?" Piccadilly asked, his eyes snapping.
" Me?" said Mac, looking surprised. " Why,
I was holding 'em till there wasn't a man left
to back me up. Ail the saine, Pickie, old sport,
the Fifth's done pretty well in this war, consider-
ing there's been only one Yank to help 'em."
Piccadilly was boiling mad by this time.
"I'd 'Yank' yer if I'ad yer outer 'ere," he

82 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

growled. "'Ave ye forgot this is a 'orspital
we're in, and no place for your boastin'?"
They were working up to the fighting-point,
and they might have reached it if a nurse had
hOt told them to make peace and be quiet.
"Those two are always going at each other
like that," Billy explained to the M.O., who had
corne up to find out what the trouble was about.
"They don't mean anything by it. It's just a
habit of theirs that they can't break. It don't
make any difference where they are. They'll
be jawing each other the saine way in Heaven,
if they ever get there."
"Tell the youngster what's been going on
since he's been here," said the M.O."
" It would take a week to tell it," Mac an-
swered. " Believe me, son, you've missed a lot.
We've been mopping the Boches up fast. Some
scrapping! Wow! I got three with my bayonet
inside of three minutes."
"You're a liar!" Piccadilly put in, keeping his
voice low since the nurse had told him to be
peaceful and quiet. "'Twas meself that got
three, and you got none at ail, as you know
well."
" Let it pass," said Mac, keeping the tail of
his eye on the M.O. " It don't matter. Maybe
I ruade a mistake in the count. But, anyway, it
was some scrapping."
" Big Tom's out of it for good," Billy told me.
"Got lait in the arm. He's going back to

"GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!" 183
Blighty. We'll all be back there soon if it keeps
up like this."
" I'm thinking it's time to say good-bye," Picca-
dilly said. "They told us not to stay long."
He held out a grimy hand as big as the two of
mine.
" Good-bye, old pals," I said. " I'll be think-
in, about you back in Blîghty."
Then they each said good-bye and a few words
to cheer me, and marched out. As they went
I heard Piccadilly say:
" Wot «tre we goin' to do for a mascot now?
We'll 'are to get a dog, or a cat, or something.
Any kind of animal will do to bring us luck."
A little later I and a number of other wounded
lads were carried out and put into a shaker,
and away we rolled for the railroad. I learned
then why they called the ambulances shakers.
The life was almost shaken out of me before
we had gone half a toile. Every time the thing
bumped or lurched a chorus of groans went up,
and one chap fainted, and didn't corne to all the
rest of the ride. Every jolt set my wounds
throbbing and paining, till 1 wished the Boches
had done for me for good and all and had saved
me from all that misery. It took two dreadful
hours to get to the railroad, and we were all half
dead by that time.
The train wasn't much better than the
shaker, though, being full of wounded, it
travelled slovly. The wound of the lad next to
(¢ 976) |8

18 4

THE FIGHTING MASCOT

me was bleeding, and his eyes were closed. I
think he must have passed out before we got
to the end of the journey. Even now I never
think of that ride without a shiver, and I can
still hear the cries and groans that sounded all
day long around me.
At last they carried us out and into the base
hospital at Boulogne, and the place was Heaven
after the shaker and the train. There were
clean white sheets tolie in--the first I had seen
since leaving England--and good food, and
everything to make us comfortable. But there
was one thing I missed, the noise of the guns.
The stillness got on my nerves. If I could have
heard artillery going good and strong, and ma-
chine-guns rattling outside the windows, the place
would not have seemed so strange, and I should
bave rested easier.
The nurses gathered round my cot the first
day I was there, to get a look at me, for I was
the only patient they had had of my age, and
there was much talk of the "boy soldier", though
it was little I felt like a boy after ail I had been
through. Small I was, and young, but I felt ten
years older than before we went into the trenches
at Ypres, and I had seen more trouble than many
a man does in a lifetime.
One morning I was lying in my cot, staring up
at the ceiling, when a big shadow fell across me
and a voice I knew well cried out: " Why, bless
my blooming eyes, if it isn't the Mascot!"

"GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!"

18 5

It was Big Tom, looking as healthy and strong
as an ox, though one of his arms was in a sling.
For a time he stood beside me, telling of his last
fight and of how he got his wound, and then
lumbered off to board the boat that was to take
him back to Egland.
Two weeks I lay in the Boulogne hospital,
and then the day came when they shipped me
for old Blighty. It was a fine, clear day, with
a breeze blowing strong and salty from the sea,
and the wounded were ail happy; the time had
corne when they were to see their friends and
families again. Out on the pier some of them
were singing feebly, " Take Me Back to Dear
Old Blighty", and " The Ship That's Bound
for Blighty"
It was a hard crossing for us ail, for the boat
rolled up and down in the big sea-swells till
I wished myself back at Boulogne. I was in bed
on the upper deck, strapped down with weights,
with not a soul to talk to, and nothing to do but
listen to the chugging of the engines and the
splashing of the sea. Out in mid-channel I over-
heard a nurse say that three operations were
going on at that very moment, and that a wounded
man had passed west a few minutes before. Then
people came hurrying past me talking of a sub-
marine that was chasing us, and I didn't know
for a time whether it was Blighty or the bottom
of the sea I was going to. But the submarine
dropped out of sight, and at last we steamed into

186 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

Dover. There we landed, but we were soon
afloat again on the way to Folkestone and Lon-
dOl-l.
I heard the little river steamers chugging as
we went up the Thames, and the breezes from
the fields of old England were in out faces, and
I felt like a lad coming out of a dream, and a bad
one, with the war so far away and home so near.

CHAPTER XXIX

I Meet the King

" Up to mighty London came an Irish lad one day."

So the good old song goes; but he wasn't
wounded and fiat oll his back as I was.
As far back as I could remember I had longed
to s':e the greatest city in the world. When I
was a very young lad--hOt more than eight or
ten -I had been near to running away from home
to find my way to it, and to stay there until I
had had a good look at the King. A cat may
look at a king, and so could I if ever I could find
my way to the Buckingham Palace gate, and
should wait there long enough. And here I was
at last in mighty London, with small chance of
seeing any of its wonders, or ofgetting to Bucking-
ham Palace or anywhere else but a hospital.
The boat came in to her pier, and I could hear
them making her fast. In a few minutes I was
put on a stretcher and carried down the gang-
plank in a long line of wounded.
I heard cheers, and, lifting my head a bit
I saw a great crowd of people. They were
there to welcome us--men, women, and children,
187

188 THE F1GHTING MASCOT

thousands of them. Then the stretcher-bearers
stopped, and, looking up again, I saw, close by,
a small, bearded man in a general's uniform
standing in the centre of a group of officers. He
came up to me and held out his hand.
It was the King. The King of England was
shaking hands with me, a poor wounded Tommy!
" How do you feel?" he asked.
For a moment I couldn't find my voice, and
the thought was running through my head,
"What would they think back home if they
knew the King was speaking to me?" At last
I managed to say, though hot much above a
whisper:
" I ana all right, mr.""
He looked at me for a moment with very
serious eyes.
"Your age?" he asked.
I told him, and he gave a little start of surprise.
"Sixteen! So young!" he said. "At your
age you should never bave been there. But,
my boy, if all the men of England showed such
spirit we should soon win the war."
He made way for some one, and I saw the
Queen beside me. She gave me ber hand and
passed on. As she disappeared the officers came
crowding up to shake hands with me, and then
the King saluted us and turned away.
That is how I met King George. Small chance
that ever I shall shake his hand again, but I have
that moment to remember for the rest of my lire.

I MEET THE KING t89

A finer man I never spoke with. May his reign
be long! God save the King!
The line of stretchers moved on, and, when my
mind had cleared a bit from the excitement, I
began to wonder what Billy and Piccadilly and the
rest of the lads would say if they heard King
George himself had spoken with me. I felt sorry
for those poor chaps, facing the shells and bullets,
and sleeping with the rats in the trenches, while
here I was, welcomed by the King and Queen and
their officers, and cheered as a hero by the crowds.
A line of sixty ambulance motor-cars was wait-
ing for us, and, three of us in each car, we moved
slowly away for St. George's Hospital. The
streets were black with people, and they cheered
us as we passed, and threw cigarettes and flowers
into the cars. Men stood with bared heads as we
went by, and many a woman had her handkerchief
to her eyes. There was good cause for their
tears, for more than one poor lad among us was
near to death, and knew nothing of the welcome
he was getting as we moved on through the
shadows of the great buildings.
At the hospital the nurses ruade much of me.
They treated me as if I were only a child, and
each of them gave me a Mss, though it was little
of the child that was left in me after the lire in the
trenches. There was an American doctor there,
Dr. Ransom, who told me he had no doubt that
I was the youngest soldier in the British Army;
and it may have been so. I knew I had been the

9 o THE FIGHTING MASCOT
youngest at Ypres and also at Arras, and, though
I had heard of one or two lads under age who
were in the war, they were older than I.
The whole city was ours t'rom the day we
arrived. Perhaps we should soon be forgotten;
but for those days we lay in the hospital we were
heroes, honoured and admired. The Lord Mayor
came to see us, and he gave tne a one-pound
note, besides distributing pipes, tobacco, and
cigarettes anaong the rest. Then a company of
the Black Watch paid us a visit, and talked with
us of our life at the front. One day we had a
concert, when some famous actors joined in
entertaining us. Being wounded was not so bad
after ail.
For almost three months I lay there in the
hospital. When at last I was able to get to my
feet again there was no uniform that could be
found to fit me. My old one had been burned up,
so I had to stay indoors until a nurse one day
brought me a new one ruade to my measure. I t
fitted like a glove, and that night I went to a great
ball at the Lord Mayor's house to which rive
hundred so]diers from the hospitals had been
invited.
Oh, that was a sight worth seeing, stranger to
me than the trenches or the battle-fields, and more
full of interest. It was nearer to being a palace
than any place I had ever been in. Ail ablaze
with lights it was. Hundreds of beautiful women
were dancing, and everywhere were officers of

I MEET THE KING 9

high rank, their breasts covered with decorations.
with now and then the greatest prize of ail, the
Victoria Cross, among them, and there were tables
piled high with food and sweets in great dishes of
silver and gold.
Then a new order came that as the soldiers in
the hospitals received no pay they could go to any
theatre free. I lost no time in going to Drury
Lane with a nurse, where we saw "Seven Days'
Leave". When it wasn't the theatre it was a
motor-drive or a football-game, and wherever we
went the crowds cheered us and showered us with
cigarettes and flowers.
Oh, London was good to us wounded Tommies!
London had a big heart, and remembered what we
had been through in mud and rain among the
bullets and the shells.

CHAPTER XXX

The Last Adventure

At last came my discharge from the army as
unfit for service, and I went home with fifty-six
pounds in my pocket, and the promise of a pension
of a pound a week.
As I came to Maria Street, my eyes busy with
ail the old, familiar sights, I brushed against a
stout young chap who was leaning against a wall
eating cookies out of a paper bag. It was Jimmie
Kelly, a lad who had been a pal of mine when we
went to school together.
"Hello!" he said. "I hear you've been in the
war."
"I'm just back from it," I answered, and pointed
to the service medal on my coat.
"And did you see any of the fighting?" he
asked.
I had to laugh at him. Did I see any ofthe
fighting! I told him I had killed a few Germans
myself, and had lain wounded for forty-eight hours
out in No Man's Land.
"Are ye fooling?" says he.
I showed him the wound on my head, and his
eyes grew bigger and bigger.

THE LAST ADVENTURE t93
I left him standing there, and when I turned
around for another look at him he had dropped
the bag of cookies on the walk and was staring
after me with his mouth open. I was beginning
to find out what it was like to be coming home a
hero, and I threw my chest out and held my head
high as I marched up to the old bouse where I
knew my mother was waiting. The door flew
open, and there she stood, with ber arms held out
for me. It was the greatest day of ber life, she
said, and, though she had visited me in the
hospital, she couldn't look at me enough nor hear
too much of ail that I had been through.
In the evening many of the neighbours came in,
and I had to tell my story ail over again. Old
Mr. Kelly, who was past eighty if he was a day,
and fairly deaf, sat close in front of me, his
whiskers almost in my face, and a hand to his ear.
When I had got through with what we had done
at Ypres and with how the shells and bullets and
bayonets had more than once corne near to wiping
us out, he piped up, "But did ye see any of the
fighting, lad?" And I had to tell it once more,
shouting it into his ear.
One day I happened to be at the Sailors' Home,
where a ship's officer asked me to take a job with
him. I asked where the ship was going.
"To the United States," said he. "She's the
Cut/6ert, of the Booth line. We need a coal-
passer. You'll do."
"I'll go," I said; and the next day we sailed,

lq 4 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
although my mother warned me again that I should
keep away from the sea.
There were three other coal-passers on the
(_.)tthberl. We worked in shifts, two of us to a
shift, four hours on and eight off. No army mules
ever worked harder than we did, as we rolled
barrels of coal from the bunkers to the rires.
Stripped to the waist we were, and dripping wet
with the heat. \Vhen I thought I could stand it
no longer the rires would send a hotter wave than
ever over me, till my head grew dizzy and I gasped
for a breath of cool air; never a moment was
there for even a word, for the rires were always
hungry for more.
The two of us were black with coal dust from
our hair to the waist-line, with only the whites of
our eyes showing through all the grime. The lads
of the Scruffy Fifth should have seen me then.
We had been clean--white as snow--in the
trenches at Ypres compared with what I was down
there in the bunkers.
At last the shift would change, and old Peter,
the man who worked with me on the job, would
gowithmeto thedecktocool off. Foratime I
would lie there half dead from the hard work and
the heat, but old Peter had been a coal-passer
since he was a boy, and didn't mind it a bit. He
had never known what any other kind of a job
was. Almost all his life he had spent down in the
hold of a ship. I showed him my service badge
and my discharge papers, and told him of what I

THE LAST ADVENTURE 95
had seen of the war and of my meeting with the
King.
"And King George shook your 'and?" said old
Peter.
"He did that," said I.
He puffed his pipe for a few ,noments without a
word. Then he held out his hand to me.
"Boy,-I'm askin' ye to let me shake the
and that shook the 'and of the King," he said.
" 'Twill be something to remember."
One day we were up on deck resting, when
suddenly old Peter jumped to his feet.
" Look, lad!" he cried. "They're after us!"
Off a few hundred yards or so I saw a submarine
rising like a whale out of the water. Then we saw
the wake of a torpedo. There were two ships
behind us, and from one of them came the sound
of an explosion. In the saine moment out gunners
began to tire, and we put on full steam to rUl'l for
safety.
The stern of the ship that had been struck was
dipping deep into the water. She was sinking;
there was no doubt of that, but it was against
orders to stop to help her. We should have been
sunk ourselves if we had done so.
The next minute another torpedo came rushing
through the water headed straight for us.
" It's going to get us," cried Peter; and I
thought he was right, and made up my mind to
jump into the sea. I held my breath as I watched
the thing coming. \Ve were going fast, alld there

196 THE FIGHTING MASCOT

was just a chance that it might miss us, but it
looked to me as if it were going to strike amid-
ships.
It missed us. We saw it pass out stern, hot
ten yards away. And, in the saine moment, the
sinking ship behind us shot out a great cloud of
steam and dropped out of sight like a stone.
A shell came screeching over our decks; then
another, and again we thought we were lost. But
we were giving the German as good as they sent,
and they were beginning to submerge. Next
minute the danger was over.
We learned that word had reached our captain
that the sea ahead of us was full of danger, and
we turned far out of our course to get around the
waiting submarines. The next day old Peter told
me we were headed south, and were already off
our path by at least a hundred miles.
More than a week late, because of the round-
about course we had taken, we steamed into New
York harbour on a clear, sunny morning, and the
Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers lay before
us like stage scenery.
Not a soul did I know in America, and after
leaving the ship I roamed the streets feeling
lonely and a bit homesick, hOt knowing where to
go nor what to do next. At last I came to a crowd
of people, who were listening to a soldier making
a speech. I edged my way up to the front, and
before long the speaker caught sight of the service
badge on my coat,

THE LAST ADVENTURE 97
" I'll ber that chap bas been in the war," he
called out. "Corne up here, and tell this crowd
vhat you've seen, and help the Red Cross drive."
So I climbed up the steps to where he stood.
Little I knew what to say, and I began to shake
with stage fright as I saw ail the people staring at
me.
" Brace up, sport!" said the man who had asked
me up, "and if you've seen any fighting, tell 'em
about it. That's the stuff they want."
Ail in a breath my thoughts went back to the
trenches and to the long marches, and I told them
of how we had fought at Ypres and Arras, of the
homeless women and children, and of the nurse
who had lost ber hands. They cheered, and
shouted for more, and men and women went down
into their pockets to give to the Red Cross fund.
When the meeting was over the soldier took me
in tow, and introduced me to a lot of people, and
I became a regular speaker for the Red Cross and
the Liberty Loan. One evening after I had been
telling my story a red-headed chap came up to me
and said he had a cousin in the Fifth Liverpool
named M'Bride. He asked if I knew him.
"Sure I know him," I said. " It was from
thinking of ail he told me about his bear-hunting
and gold-digging that I ruade up my mind to corne
to America. He's been a great hunter of big
gaine, that lad."
"Yeah?" said the red-headed man. " Why,
son, that cousin of mine is the darnedest liar that

198 THE FIGHTING MASCOT
ever came down the pike. The o.nly big gaine
he's ever seen is musk-rats up on the old farm.
He's never been west of Hackensack."
So perhaps I won't go bear-hunting or gold-
digging after ail, though l'mstill hunting for
adventure.
lt's the life in the old trenches that is calling me
now, and glad I should be to go back to it. But
I ara on the wounded list as unfit for service.
Whenever I ara alone my mind turns to Billy and
Piccadilly, and the test of the lads I knew, and I
grow sad thinking that I shall never be with them
there again, and that my fighting days are over
for good and all.
Often at night queer dreams corne to me, and
I ara with them in the fighting lines once more,
and I hear the big guns going as we lie in the mud
and rain. And sometimes, when the shell-shock
that came to me at Arras has been shaking up my
nerves a bit, I start up from my sleep, groping in
the dark for my gun, with the voices of the
Tommies in the stone house ringing in my ears:
" Put the steel to 'im! Put the steel to 'im!"

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