Lieutenant Cavendish went off to inflict his leadership on someone else. Walsh lit a fresh Navy Cut. He climbed out of the hole to see what the shelling had done to the hamlet.

A skinny little stubble-cheeked French sergeant puffing on a pipe emerged from cover about the same time he did. The Frenchman waved. "Ca va, Tommy?" he called.

"Va bien. Et tu?" Walsh ran through a good part of his clean French with that. He waved toward the east, then spat.

The French noncom nodded. "Fucking Boche," he said. His English was probably as filthy as most of Walsh's Francais. A couple of his men came out. He started yelling at them. He was a sergeant, all right.

Walsh checked on the soldiers in his own section. The fellow who'd bought part of a plot came from a different company. That was something, anyhow. After nodding rather smugly, Walsh wondered why it should be. The British army was no better off because the wounded man wasn't from his outfit. And that other company was weakened instead of his. In the larger scheme of things, so what?

But it was a bloke Walsh didn't know, not one he did. You didn't want one of your mates to stop one. Maybe that was a reminder you were too bloody liable to stop one yourself. Of course, you had to be an idiot not to know as much already. Still, there was a difference-whether there should have been or not-between knowing something and getting your nose rubbed in it.

"Are we supposed to move up again, Sergeant?" asked a soldier named Nigel. Like Lieutenant Cavendish, he spoke like an educated man. He didn't sound toffee-nosed doing it, though.

"Nobody's told me if we are," Walsh answered. "You can bet your last quid the lieutenant would have, too."

He wasn't supposed to speak ill of officers. He was supposed to let the men in his charge form their unflattering opinions all by themselves. By the way Nigel and Bill and the others chuckled, they needed no help from him.