23_rd May_.—We did company drill in the morning. Afterwards Jones-Bateman and I lay on the warm grass and watched the aeroplanes flying above the trenches pursued by a trail of white shrapnel puffs. In the evening I was detailed to take out a working-party to Vermelles les Noyelles to work on a second line of defence—trench digging and putting up barbed wire under an R.E. officer. But the ground was hard and the men were tired out when they got back about two o’clock in the morning. They sang songs all the way home. They have one about Company Quartermaster-Sergeant Finnigan: Coolness under fire, Coolness under fire, Mentioned in dispatches For pinching the company rations, Coolness under fire. Now he’s on the peg, Now he’s on the peg, Mentioned in dispatches For drinking the company rum, Now he’s on the peg. The chorus is: Whiter than the milky cokernuts, Whiter than the milky cokernuts, Wash me in the water That you washed your dirty daughter in And I shall be whiter than the milky cokernuts. Nuts, Nuts, Oooooh nuts. Finnigan doesn’t mind the libel at all. This is what happened the other day. Two young miners, in another company, disliked their sergeant, who had a down on them and gave them all the most dirty and dangerous jobs. When they were in billets he crimed them for things they hadn’t done. So they decided to kill him. Later they reported at Battalion Orderly Room and asked to see the adjutant. This was irregular, because a private is not allowed to speak to an officer without an N.C.O. of his own company to act as go-between. The adjutant happened to see them and said: ‘Well, what is it you want?’ Smartly slapping the small-of-the-butt of their sloped rifles they said: ‘We’ve come to report, sir, that we are very sorry but we’ve shot our company sergeant-major.’ The adjutant said: ‘Good heavens, how did that happen?’ They answered: ‘It was an accident, sir.’ ‘What do you mean? Did you mistake him for a German?’ ‘No, sir, we mistook him for our platoon sergeant.’ So they were both shot by a firing squad of their own company against the wall of a convent at Béthune. Their last words were the battalion rallying-cry: ‘Stick it, the Welsh!’ (They say that a certain Captain Haggard first used it in the battle of Ypres when he was mortally wounded.) The French military governor was present at the execution and made a little speech saying how gloriously British soldiers can die.