rman."

So he had struck the man on the right and the one on the left and had
downed both of them, but the German in back of him, got him with the
bayonet. A nerve centre in his back was severed by the slash of the
steel that extended almost from one shoulder to the other, and Big Boy
had fallen to the ground, his arms and legs powerless. Then the German
with the bayonet robbed him. Big Boy enumerated the loss to
me,--fifty-three dollars and his girl's picture.

Although paralysed and helpless, there was nothing down in the mouth
about Big Boy--indeed, he provided most of the fun in the ward. He had
an idea all of his own about what he was going to do after the war and
he let us know about it that night.

"All of you guys have told what you're going to do," he said, "now I'm
going to tell you the truth. I'm going back to that little town of mine
in Ohio and go down to the grocery store and sit there on a soap box on
the porch.

"Then I'm going to gather all the little boys in the neighbourhood round
about me and then I'm going to outlie the G. A. R."

There was one thing in that ward that nobody could lie about and that
was the twitches of pain we suffered in the mornings when the old
dressings of the day before were changed and new ones applied.

The doctor and his woman assistant who had charge of the surgical
dressings on that corridor would arrive in the ward shortly after
breakfast. They would be wheeling in front of them a rubber-tired,
white-enamelled vehicle on which were piled the jars of antiseptic
gauze and trays of nickel-plated instruments, which both the doctor and
his assistant would handle with rubber-gloved hands. In our ward that
vehicle was known as the "Agony Cart," and every time it stopped at the
foot of a bed you would be pretty sure to hear a groan or a stifled wail
in a few minutes.

We had various ways of expressing or suppressing the pain. You who have
had a particularly vicious mustard plaster jerked off that tender spot
in the back, right between the shoulders, have some small conception of
the delicate sensation that accompanies the removal of old gauze from a
healing wound.

Some of the men would grit their teeth and grunt, others would put their
wrists in their mouths and bite themselves during the operation. Some
others would try to keep talking to the doctor or the nurse while the
ordeal was in progress and others would just simply shout. There was
little satisfaction to be ga