The Division that has no history is not necessarily happy.  There were portions of the line, it is true, which provided a great deal of comfort and very little danger.  Fine dug-outs were constructed—­you have probably seen them in the illustrated papers.  The men were more at home in such trenches than in the ramshackle farms behind the lines.  These show trenches were emphatically the exception.  The average trench on the line during last winter was neither comfortable nor safe.  Yellow clay, six inches to four feet or more of stinking water, many corpses behind the trenches buried just underneath the surface-crust, and in front of the trenches not buried at all, inveterate sniping from a slightly superior position—­these are not pleasant bedfellows.  The old Division (or rather the new Division—­the infantrymen of the old Division were now pitifully few) worked right hard through the winter.  When the early spring came and the trenches were dry, the Division was sent north to bear a hand in the two bloodiest actions of the war.  So far as I know, in the whole history of British participation in this war there has never been a more murderous fight than one of these two actions—­and the Division, with slight outside help, managed the whole affair.

Twice in the winter there was an attempted rapprochement between the Germans and ourselves.  The more famous gave the Division a mention by “Eyewitness,” so we all became swollen with pride.

On the Kaiser’s birthday one-and-twenty large shells were dropped accurately into a farm suspected of being a battalion or brigade headquarters.  The farm promptly acknowledged the compliment by blowing up, and all round it little explosions followed.  Nothing pleases a gunner more than to strike a magazine.  He always swears he knew it was there the whole time, and, as gunners are dangerous people to quarrel with, we always pretended to believe the tale.

There are many people in England still who cannot stomach the story of the Christmas truce.  “Out there,” we cannot understand why.  Good fighting men respect good fighting men.  On our front, and on the fronts of other divisions, the Germans had behaved throughout the winter with a passable gentlemanliness.  Besides, neither the British nor the German soldier—­with the possible exception of the Prussians—­has been able to stoke up that virulent hate which devastates so many German and British homes.  A certain lance-corporal puts the matter thus:[26]—­

“We’re fightin’ for somethink what we’ve got.  Those poor beggars is fightin’ cos they’ve got to.  An’ old Bill Kayser’s fightin’ for somethin’ what ’e’ll never get.  But ’e will get somethink, and that’s a good ’iding!"[27]

We even had a sneaking regard for that “cunning old bird, Kayser Bill.”  Our treatment of prisoners explains the Christmas Truce.  The British soldier, except when he is smarting under some dirty trick, suffering under terrible loss, or maddened by fighting or fatigue, treats his prisoners with a tolerant, rather contemptuous kindness.  May God in His mercy help any poor German who falls into the hands of a British soldier when the said German has “done the dirty” or has “turned nasty”!  There is no judge so remorseless, no executioner so ingenious in making the punishment fit the crime.