Now it can be Told

Into a small estaminet at the end of the rue des Trois Cailloux, beyond the Hôtel de Ville, came one day during the battles of the Somme two poilus, grizzled, heavy men, deeply bronzed, with white dust in their wrinkles, and the earth of the battlefields ingrained in the skin of their big, coarse hands. They ordered two "little glasses" and drank them at one gulp. Then two more.

"See what I have got, my little cabbage," said one of them, stooping to the heavy pack which he had shifted from his shoulders to the other seat beside him. "It is something to make you laugh."