Another, of slighter, more fragile frame, lies on his back, his legs apart, with a ball through his forehead. Close beside him are the bomb which he was about to throw and a tiny French-English dictionary. May we not say that he has witnessed with his blood to the friendship of two great nations? Beside another, who has been hideously wounded, the wind turns over the leaves of a soldier's Bible. But enough! My eyes can bear no more. And I hasten away from this scene, over which, like the sound of mighty organs, the great guns chant their huge and terrible chorus. To free ourselves from this nightmare we went to visit the gunners in their shelters. It was three in the afternoon, and we had only just discovered that we had not yet lunched. A big fellow, who chattered like a magpie and was built like a Hercules, lit two candles for us, stirred the fire which was crackling in an earthen stove, spread a newspaper for our table-cloth, and offered us a seat on a case of jam-jars. Our sandwiches seemed delicious; our tea, the best in the world; our hovel, a palace; our candles, an illumination. A joy, hitherto unknown, in being merely alive gave a priceless quality to the smallest pleasures of existence. We listened with the most intense interest and an unaccustomed delight to the talkative soldier, while he instructed us about the price of sugar in England. Meanwhile, his battery, just beside us, went on killing Germans. The spirit of Dickens hovered over that wretched hut. Suddenly I noticed that my companion had fallen into a brown study, and I fancied that he was back upon that hill by Beaucourt. "Come, come!" I said. "What are you thinking about now?" "I am thinking," the Englishman replied, "that we are bound to avoid war if we can, but that when war comes we are bound to meet it like men." [Illustration: 4. A FRANCO BRITISH RELIEF.] PART II. THE SQUARE JAWS. CHAPTER I. THE WELDING OF FRENCH AND BRITISH. Not all things can be welded together. There are metals which are wholly unsympathetic, and even for those which are not we require the services of the plumber and his solder. It is the glory and the good fortune of the British and French Armies that, from the first day of the war, they have shown themselves fitted--and eager--to become one; and that they have discovered, to this end (and continue daily to employ them), plumbers of the first class and lead in abundance. Let us understand one another. To say "joining," "soldering," is not to say "fusion," and the theory of united action upon a united front does not necessarily imply that out of two friends a single individual is wrought. A _poilu_ might say that it is possible to be very good comrades without sleeping in the same bed.