So either bank was dotted with naked bodies, and the stream itself
showed head after head, and flashing white arms as men went swimming.
Some were scrubbing themselves, taking a Briton's keen delight in a
bath, no matter what the circumstances in which he gets it; others
were washing their clothes, slapping and pounding the soaked garments
in a way to have wrung the hearts of their wives, had they seen them
at it. The British soldier, in the field, does many things for
himself that folks at hame never think of! But many of the men were
just lying on the bank, sprawled out and sunning themselves like
alligators, basking in the warm sunshine and soaking up rest and
good cheer.
It looked like a good place for a concert, and so I quickly gathered
an audience of about a thousand men from the dugouts in the
embankment and obeyed their injunctions to "Go it, Harry! Gie us a
song, do now!"
As I finished my first song my audience applauded me and cheered me
most heartily, and the laddies along the banks of the Scarpe heard
them, and came running up to see what was afoot. There were no ladies
thereabout, and they did not stand on a small matter like getting
dressed! Not they! They came running just as they were, and Adam,
garbed in his fig leaf, was fully clad compared to most of them. It
was the barest gallery I ever saw, and the noisiest, too, and the
most truly appreciative.
High up above us airplanes were circling, so high that we could not
tell from which side they came, except when we saw some of them being
shelled, and so knew that they belonged to Fritz.
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