The waiter certainly was rather slow, or perhaps it was that we were hungry and impatient. In any case, I apologised to my guest, a young fellow home on leave, and explained that the waiter was entitled to be a little absent-minded, for he had lost two sons in the war and his only remaining son had been out of the Army, a permanent .  
"He tells me," I said, "that the boy never talks about the war or his experiences. He just seems silent and . All that they know is that he killed five Germans, and that he is sorry for one of them. It happened while he was on patrol. There had been a good deal of indignation at that part of the line because there had been cases reported in which 'hands up' had been a trick for ensnaring some of our men, and the order had been given that the signal was to be ignored and those making it shot at sight. It was and a young German soldier was seen running forward with his hands up. The patrol fired and he fell. He was quite unarmed and alone. On his body they found letters from his sweetheart in England—old letters that he had carried with him all through the war. They showed that he had been at work at some place in London and had been engaged to be married when the war broke out."
 
"Yes," said my companion, as the waiter came up with the fish. "Yes, when the enemy turns from an abstraction to an individual you generally find there's something that makes you hate this business. I don't know that I have felt more sorry for any man's death in this war than for that of a German.
 
"You've been to F——, haven't you? You know that bit of line north of the M—— road that you reach by the communication that is always up to your knees in mud no matter how dry the weather is. You remember how close the lines are to each other at that point—not forty yards apart? I was there in a dull season."
 
"You were lucky," I said. "It isn't often dull there."
 
"No, but it was then. The Boche would drop over an occasional whiz-bang as a , and he'd have his usual afternoon cock-shy over our heads at the last on the ruins of the cathedral in the town behind us. But really there was nothing doing, and we got rather chummy with the fellows over the way. We'd put up a target for them, and they'd do the same for us. They'd got some decent singers among them, and we'd shout for the 'Hate' song or 'Wacht am Rhein' or 'Tannenbaum' or something of that sort and they always obliged, and we gave them the best we had back.
 
"Yes, we got quite friendly, and one morning one of their men got up on the parapet over the way, bowed very low, and shouted 'Goot morning.' Our men answered, 'Morgen, Fritz. How goes it?' and so............