which he leaned his elbow, and by the light of it I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. There was a haggard look on his face.
"It must need some nerve," I said, awkwardly, "to go out so often in No Man's Land. Real pluck."
He stared at me, as though surprised, and then laughed harshly.
"Pluck? What's that? I'm scared stiff, half the time. Do you think I like it?"
He seemed to get angry, was angry, I think.
"Do any of us like it? These damn things that blow men to bits, make rags of them, tear their bowels out, and their eyes? Or to live on top of a mine-crater, as we are now, never knowing when you're going up in smoke and flame? If you like that sort of thing yourself you can take my share. I have never met a man who did."
Yet when Brand was taken out of the trenches—by a word spoken over the telephone from corps Headquarters—because of his knowledge of German and his cousinship to a lady who was a friend of the Corps Commander's niece, he was miserable and savage. I met him many times after that as an Intelligence officer at the corps cages, examining prisoners on days of battle.
"An embusqué job!" he said. "I'm saving my skin while the youngsters die."
He stood outside his hut one day on a morning of battle in the Somme fields—up by Pozières. No prisoners had yet come down. He forgot my presence and stood listening to the fury of gun-fire and watching the smoke and flame away there on the ridge.
"Christ!" he cried. "Why am I here? Why aren't I with my pals up there, getting blown to blood and pulp? Blood and pulp! Blood and pulp!"
Then he remembered me, and turned in a shamefaced way, and said, "Sorry!. . . I feel rather hipped to-day."
