Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/101

 aforementioned crater would not have been occupied, and the considerable number of defunct Germans would now be alive. And this was the way of it.

The presence of David in such an unhealthy locality as Flanders was entirely due to his regrettable lack of distinction between meum and tuum. Exactly what occurred is immaterial, but deciding that the evils he knew of in the shape of prison were probably worse than the evils he did not know of, in the shape of the Hun, our friend managed to evade the too pressing attentions of the police, and in due course found himself across the water in one of the new formed Tunnelling Companies. These companies are composed almost entirely of those who from their earliest infancy have been reared in the atmosphere of moles rather than in the atmosphere of men, and have as their work out here the great game of mining and countermining. Early in the proceedings it became apparent to those whose duty and privilege it was to command David Jones that his affection for woolly bears, pip squeaks, crumps, Marias, and others of the great genus obus was not of that type which passeth the love of women.