Not one Irishman was speaking really, but a dozen. They came out of their little houses and dugouts to gather around the brazier; and for every remark I made I received a fusillade in reply. It was an event, an American appearing in that trench in the small hours of the morning. “I’ve a brother in Oklahoma!” said one. “Is he a millionaire yet?” I asked. “If he is he’s keeping it a secret!” Some of them had been at Mons; a few of them had gone through the whole campaign without a scratch; more had been wounded and returned to the front. I like to ask that question, “Were you at Mons?” and get the answer, “Yes, sir, I was; I was through it all!” without boasting--a Mons veteran need not boast--but in the spirit of pride. To have been at Mons, where that hard-bought retreat of one against five began, will ever be enough glory for English, Scotch, Irish, or Welsh. It is like saying, “I was in Pickett’s charge!” A trench-toughened, battle-toughened old sergeant was sitting in the doorway of his dugout, frying a strip of bacon over one rim of the brazier and making tea over the other. The bacon sizzled with an appetising aroma and a bullet sizzled harmlessly overhead. Behind that wall of sandbags all were perfectly safe, unless a shell came. But who worries about shells? It is like worrying about being struck by lightning when clouds gather in a summer sky. “It looks like good bacon,” I remarked. “It is that!” said the sergeant. “And the hungrier ye are the better. It’s your nose that’s telling ye so this minute. I can see that ye’re hungry yoursilf!” “Then you’re pretty well fed?” “Well fed, is it? It’s stuffed we are, like the geese that grow the paté what-do-you-call-it? Eating is our pastime. We eat when we’ve nothing else to do and when we’ve got to do something. We get eggs up here--a fine man is Lord Kitchener--yes, sir, eggs up here in the trenches!” When they seemed to think that I was sceptical, he produced some eggs in evidence. “And if ye’ll not have the bacon, ye’ll have a drop of tea. Mind, now, while your tongue is trying to be polite, your stomach is calling your tongue a liar!” Irish hospitality responded to the impulse of a warm Irish heart. Wouldn’t I have a souvenir? Out came German bullets and buckles and officers’ whistles and helmets and fragments of shells and German diaries. “It’s easy to get them out there where the Germans fell that thick!” I was told. “And will ye look at this and take it home to give your pro-German Irish in America, to show what their friends are shooting at the Irish? I found them mesilf on a dead German.”