They spoke to him in quite
a patronising way, and even asked him two or three direct
questions about fighting in the trenches, and wounds and
the dead men in No Man's Land and the other horrors that
the civilian mind hankers to hear about. Perhaps they
thought, from the boy's talk, that he had seen nothing.
If so, they were mistaken. For about three minutes, not
more, Tom gave them what was coming to them. He told
them, for example, why he trained his "fellows" to drive
the bayonet through the stomach and not through the head,
that the bayonet driven through the face or skull sticks
and,--but there is no need to recite it here. Any of the
boys like Tom can tell it all to you, only they don't
want to and don't care to.
They've got past it.
But I noticed that as the boy talked,--quietly and
reluctantly enough,--the older men fell silent and looked
into his face with the realisation that behind his simple
talk and quiet manner lay an inward vision of grim and
awful realities that no words could picture.
I think that they were glad when we joined the ladies
again and when Tom talked of the amateur vaudeville show
that his company had got up behind the trenches.
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