It would seem from the stories I have heard that odd escapes from death are an unfailing source of playfulness and laughter. A shell exploded in a trench held by an Irish battalion. One man was hurled quite twelve feet in the air, and, turning two somersaults in his descent, alighted on his back, and but little hurt, just outside the trench. He quickly picked himself up and rejoined his astonished comrades. "He came down with that force," said an invalided Irish soldier who told me of the incident, "that it was the greatest wonder in the world he didn't knock a groan out of the ground." No groan came from the man himself. "That was a toss and a half, and no mistake," he remarked cheerily when he got back to the trench; and in answer to an inquiry whether he was much hurt he said, "I only feel a bit moidhered in me head." More comical still in its unexpectedness was the reply of another Irishman who met with a different misadventure from the same cause. A German 17-in. shell exploded on the parapet of a trench, and this Irishman was buried in the ruins. However, he was dug out alive, and his rescuers jokingly asked him what all the trouble was about. "Just those blessed snipers again," he spluttered through his mouth full of mud, "and may the divil fly away with the one that fired that bullet." It is readily acknowledged at the Front that the Irish soldiers have a rich gift of natural humour. But, what is more--as some of my stories may show--they are never so exceedingly comic as when they do not intend to be comic at all. Is it not better to be funny without knowing it than to suffer the rather common lot of attempting to be funny and fail? It arises from an odd and unexpected way of putting things. How infinitely better it is than to be of so humdrum a quality as to be incapable of being comical even unconsciously in saying or in deed! Yet in this essentially Irish form of fun there is often a snare for the unwary. How can you tell that these laughable things are said and done by Irish soldiers without any perception of humour or absurdity? If you could look behind the face of that apparently simple-minded Irish soldier you might find that in reality he was "pulling your leg"--or "humbugging," as he would say himself--in a way that you would regard as most uncalled for and aggravating.