A man like Gerhardt, for instance, had always lived in a more or less rose-colored world; he belonged over here, really.  How could he know what hard moulds and crusts the big guns had broken open on the other side of the sea?  Who could ever make him understand how far it was from the strawberry bed and the glass cage in the bank, to the sky-roads over Verdure?

By three o’clock the rain had stopped.  Claude and Hicks set off again, accompanied by one of the gun team who was going back to get help for their tractor.  As it began to grow light, the two Americans wondered more and more at the extremely youthful appearance of their companion.  When they stopped at a shell-hole and washed the mud from their faces, the English boy, with his helmet off and the weather stains removed, showed a countenance of adolescent freshness, almost girlish; cheeks like pink apples, yellow curls above his forehead, long, soft lashes.

“You haven’t been over very long, have you?” Claude asked in a fatherly tone, as they took the road again.

“I came out in ’sixteen.  I was formerly in the infantry.”

The Americans liked to hear him talk; he spoke very quickly, in a high, piping voice.

“How did you come to change?”

“Oh, I belonged to one of the Pal Battalions, and we got cut to pieces.  When I came out of hospital, I thought I’d try another branch of the service, seeing my pals were gone.”

“Now, just what is a Pal Battalion?” drawled Hicks.  He hated all English words he didn’t understand, though he didn’t mind French ones in the least.

“Fellows who signed up together from school,” the lad piped.

Hicks glanced at Claude.  They both thought this boy ought to be in school for some time yet, and wondered what he looked like when he first came over.

“And you got cut up, you say?” he asked sympathetically.

“Yes, on the Somme.  We had rotten luck.  We were sent over to take a trench and couldn’t.  We didn’t even get to the wire.  The Hun was so well prepared that time, we couldn’t manage it.  We went over a thousand, and we came back seventeen.”

“A hundred and seventeen?”

“No, seventeen.”

Hicks whistled and again exchanged looks with Claude.  They could neither of them doubt him.  There was something very unpleasant about the idea of a thousand fresh-faced schoolboys being sent out against the guns.  “It must have been a fool order,” he commented.  “Suppose there was some mistake at Headquarters?”

“Oh, no, Headquarters knew what it was about!  We’d have taken it, if we’d had any sort of luck.  But the Hun happened to be full of fight.  His machine guns did for us.”

“You were hit yourself?” Claude asked him.

“In the leg.  He was popping away at me all the while, but I wriggled back on my tummy.  When I came out of the hospital my leg wasn’t strong, and there’s less marching in the artillery.