Page:War, the Liberator (1918).djvu/145

 with whom they messed, by a vivid and heartrending description of the painful scene which would take place as his mangled corpse was borne down the line, and their unavailing regrets that they had not been kinder to him when he was a bright, happy boy. Charles MacRae, his junior, was more serious, but both of them felt curiously as if the whole raid was just a game of unreality, and at the last moment they would hear that it was “let us pretend.” Particularly did they feel this when, after luncheon, they paid their servants the arrears. The Senior Subaltern’s batman refused to take the money; to which his officer replied: ‘‘You’ve jolly well got to. I’m not going to have you rifling my pockets for it after I’m dead.” From which it may be seen that he was a particularly cheerful pessimist.

At 2.15 the pontoon waggons, which the sappers had lent the party, arrived, and the men piled on to them laden, some with rifle and bayonet, some with spiked knobkerries, and all with bombs. Their officers climbed on to the leading waggon, and the cavalcade started, looking, as MacRae said, like a football crowd. All the troops they met looked at them with respect, guessing their mission, and everybody felt no end of a fine fellow, quite forgetting the imminent danger which caused the respect. The only thing they seemed to be