“You say there are a hundred thousand of them, flea-bite,” chaffed Barque.  “Well, in 1914—­do you hear me?—­Millerand, the War Minister, said to the M.P.’s, ‘There are no shirkers.’”

“Millerand!” growled Volpatte.  “I tell you, I don’t know the man; but if he said that, he’s a dirty sloven, sure enough!”

* * * * * *

“One is always,” said Bertrand, “a shirker to some one else.”

“That’s true; no matter what you call yourself, you’ll always—­always—­find worse blackguards and better blackguards than yourself.”

“All those that never go up to the trenches, or those who never go into the first line, and even those who only go there now and then, they’re shirkers, if you like to call ’em so, and you’d see how many there are if they only gave stripes to the real fighters.”

“There are two hundred and fifty to each regiment of two battalions,” said Cocon.

“There are the orderlies, and a bit since there were even the servants of the adjutants.”—­“The cooks and the under-cooks.”—­“The sergeant-majors, and the quartermaster-sergeants, as often as not.”—­“The mess corporals and the mess fatigues.”—­“Some office-props and the guard of the colors.”—­“The baggage-masters.”  “The drivers, the laborers, and all the section, with all its non-coms., and even the sappers.”—­“The cyclists.”  “Not all of them.”—­“Nearly all the Red Cross service.”—­“Not the stretcher-bearers, of course; for they’ve not only got a devilish rotten job, but they live with the companies, and when attacks are on they charge with their stretchers; but the hospital attendants.”

“Nearly all parsons, especially at the rear.  For, you know, parsons with knapsacks on, I haven’t seen a devil of a lot of ’em, have you?”

“Nor me either.  In the papers, but not here.”

“There are some, it seems.”—­“Ah!”

“Anyway, the common soldier’s taken something on in this war.”

“There are others that are in the open.  We’re not the only ones.”

“We are!” said Tulacque, sharply; “we’re almost the only ones!”

He added, “You may say—­I know well enough what you’ll tell me—­that it was the motor lorries and the heavy artillery that brought it off at Verdun.  It’s true, but they’ve got a soft job all the same by the side of us.  We’re always in danger, against their once, and we’ve got the bullets and the bombs, too, that they haven’t.  The heavy artillery reared rabbits near their dug-outs, and they’ve been making themselves omelettes for eighteen months.  We are really in danger.  Those that only get a bit of it, or only once, aren’t in it at all.  Otherwise, everybody would be.  The nursemaid strolling the streets of Paris would be, too, since there are the Taubes and the Zeppelins, as that pudding-head said that the pal was talking about just now.”

“In the first expedition to the Dardanelles, there was actually a chemist wounded by a shell.  You don’t believe me, but it’s true all the same—­an officer with green facings, wounded!”