As the gramophone
commences to sing, heads on pillows hum the air and fingers tap in
time on the sheets. It's a peculiarly childish song for men who have
seen what they have seen and done what they have done, to be so fond
of. Here's the way it runs:--
"We'll have a little cottage in a little town
And well have a little mistress in a dainty gown,
A little doggie, a little cat,
A little doorstep with WELCOME on the mat;
And we'll have a little trouble and a little strife,
But none of these things matter when you've got a little wife.
We shall be as happy as the angels up above
With a little patience and a lot of love."
A little patience and a lot of love! I suppose that's the line that's
caught the chaps. Behind all their smiling and their boyish gaiety
they know that they'll need both patience and love to meet the balance
of existence with sweetness and soldierly courage. It won't be so easy
to be soldiers when they get back into mufti and go out into the world
cripples. Here in their pyjamas in the summer sun, they're making a
first class effort. I take another look at them. No, there'll never be
any whining from men such as these.
Some of us will soon be back in the fighting--and jolly glad of
it. Others are doomed to remain in the trenches for the rest of their
lives--not the trenches of the front-line where they've been strafed
by the Hun, but the trenches of physical curtailment where self-pity
will launch wave after wave of attack against them.


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