“What do they do there?” I asked.

“Well, they don’t loaf—­there’s none of that in the British army, these days!  But it’s paradise, after the trenches.  For one thing there isn’t the constant danger there is up front.  The men aren’t under steady fire.  Of course, there’s always the chance of a bomb dropping raid by a Taube or a Fokker.  The men get a chance to clean up.  They get baths, and their clothes are cleaned and disinfected.  They get rid of the cooties—­you know what they are?”

I could guess.  The plague of vermin in the trenches is one of the minor horrors of war.

“They do a lot of drilling,” Godfrey went on.  “Except for those times in the rest billets, regiments might get a bit slack.  In the trenches, you see, the routine is strict, but it’s different.  Men are much more on their own.  There aren’t any inspections of kit and all that sort of thing—­not for neatness, anyway.

“And it’s a good thing for soldiers to be neat.  It helps discipline.  And discipline, in time of war, isn’t just a parade-ground matter.  It means lives—­every time.  Your disciplined man, who’s trained to do certain things automatically, is the man you can depend on in any sort of emergency.

“That’s the thing that the Canadians and the Australians have had to learn since they came out.  There never were any braver troops than those in the world, but at first they didn’t have the automatic discipline they needed.  That’ll be the first problem in training the new American armies, too.  It’s a highly practical matter.  And so, in the rest billets, they drill the men a goodish bit.  It keeps up the morale, and makes them fitter and keener for the work when they go back to the trenches.”

“You don’t make it sound much like a real rest for them,” I said.

“Oh, but it is, all right!  They have a comfortable place to sleep.  They get better food.  The men in the trenches get the best food it’s possible to give them, but it can’t be cooked much, for there aren’t facilities.  The diet gets pretty monotonous.  In the rest billets they get more variety.  And they have plenty of free time, and there are hours when they can go to the estaminet—­there’s always one handy, a sort of pub, you know—­and buy things for themselves.  Oh, they have a pretty good time, as you’ll see, in a rest billet.”

I had to take his word for it.  We went bowling along at a good speed, but pretty soon we encountered a detachment of Somerset men.  They halted when they spied our caravan, and so did we.  As usual they recognized us.

“You’m Harry Lauder!” said one of them, in the broad accent of his country.  “Us has seen ’ee often!”

Johnson was out already, and he and the drivers were unlimbering the wee piano.  It didn’t take so long, now that we were getting used to the task, to make ready for a roadside concert.  While I waited I talked to the men.  They were on their way to Ypres.  Tommy can’t get the name right, and long ago ceased trying to do so.  The French and Belgians call it “Eepre”—­that’s as near as I can give it to you in print, at least.  But Tommy, as all the world must know by now, calls it Wipers, and that is another name that will live as long as British history is told.