An English officer in the Royal Irish Regiment writes: "Really the courage and cheerfulness of our grand Irish boys are wonderful. They make light of their wounds, and, owing to their stamina, make rapid recoveries. The worst of them is they get very careless of the German bullets after a while and go wandering about as if they were at home." Another English officer begins an amusing story of an Irish orderly in an English regiment with the comment: "I shall never now believe that there is on this earth any man to beat the Irish for coolness and pluck." The officer was in his dug-out, and first noticed the Irishman chopping wood to make a fire for cooking purposes on a road which was made dangerous during the day by German snipers. He remarked to another officer, "By Jove! that man will get shot if he isn't careful." "No sooner had I said the word," he writes, "when a bullet splattered near his head. Then another between his legs. I saw the mud fly where the bullet struck. The man, who is the Captain's servant, turned round in the direction of the sniper and roared, 'Good shot, Kaiser. Only you might have hit me, though, for then I could have gone home.' After this the orderly proceeded to roast a fowl, singing quite unconcernedly, 'I often sigh for the silvery moon.' Another bullet came and hit him in the arm. He roared with delight; and, as he basted the fowl, exclaimed, 'Oh, I'm not going to lave you, me poor bird.' The officer shouted to him to come into the dug-out. He did so, but when he had licked the wound in his arm, and bound it up, he said he must get the fowl, or it would be overdone; and before the officer could utter a word of protest, he ran across the road to the fire, started singing again, though the bullets, once more, came whistling past his ear. When he returned to the dug-out with the fowl nicely roasted he remarked cheerily, 'People may say what they like, but them Germans are some marksmen, after all.'"