There was a military discussion on among the bunch from Company C. They got talking about the German policy of evacuating the front line trenches when we send over a concentrated barrage preparatory to a raid, and then letting fly at us with their machine guns as we return empty-handed. Somebody said he thought it was a good thing. This irritated my friend Barney Barry, solid Irishman, good soldier, and I may add, a saintly-living man. “But Oi don’t loike it,” he said, “Oi don’t loike it at all. It looks too much loike rethreatin’,—I think they betther lave us be. Take the foive uv us here—me and Jim Barry and Pat Moran and Moike Cooney, and you Unger—you’re a Dootchman, but you’re a good man—the foive of us in a thrench with our roifles and what we’d have on us to shoot, and a couple uv exthra bandoliers, and a bunch of thim guinny foot-balls (hand grenades) and a bit of wire up in front; and if the young officers u’d only keep their heads, and not be sayin’ ‘Do this; and don’t do that’; gettin’ themselves excoited, and whot’s worse, gettin’ us excoited, but just lave us be, I give ye me wurrd that be the toime mornin’ u’d come, and ye’d come to be buryin’ thim, ye’d think ye had your old job back diggin’ the subway.” The Colonel was delighted with this sample of the spirit of his Irish regiment. And I determined to let him see the whole works at once. He might as well get the full flavor of the Regiment first as last. We had a concert going on in the next room. Tom O’Kelly sang in his fine full rich baritone the “Low Back Car” and that haunting Scottish melody of “Loch Lomond.” “Give us a rebel song, Tom,” I called. “What’s that, sir—Father, I mean.” McCoy twinkled delightedly. “A rebel song,” I repeated. “Alright, Father, what shall I sing.” “Oh, you know a dozen of them. ‘The West’s Awake,’ ‘O’Donnel Aboo’ or ‘A Nation Once Again.’” Tom responded readily with “O’Donnel Aboo,” and as its defiant strains ended in a burst of applause he broke into the blood stirring old rebel ballad, “The Wearing of the Green.” Colonel McCoy’s face was beaming. He evidently likes things to have their proper atmosphere. I can see the old Irish 69th is just what he expected it to be, and what he wanted it to be. I see there is no worry in his mind about how these singers of rebel songs will do their part in this war. I had a long talk with him today about the Regiment, and I find him anxious to keep up its spirit and traditions. They are as dear to him for their romantic flavor and their military value as those of the Household Guards or the Black Watch are to the Englishman or the Scot. REHERREY _May_ 12th, 1918