ced a splash of red on the lobe of his
ear, just like a coral bead.

"'Did they wing you?' I asked. And even as I spoke, he staggered
against the wall and turned round so that I saw him full in the face.
There was a hole in the other side, just at the cheek bone, that I
could have put my finger in. He had been shot clear through the head.

"'Poor chap,' I said, and lifted him over behind the chimney, where I
had been. He didn't speak. I left him there and went to the door,
thinking that I might see a Red Cross nurse somewhere about, and sure
enough, there was one bending over a man stretched on the ground. It
was the major who had been giving us the ranges.

"'Is he hurt bad?' I asked.

"The Red Cross man had the major's shirt open, looking at his wound.
'He's shot through the heart,' he said.

"'Can you come in here a minute, when you get through with him?
There's a Thirteenth boy just been hit.'

"'Hit where?'

"'In the head.'

"'Hold him by the jowls,' he said, 'until I come,' So I held him by
the jowls, and then he spoke for the first time, and what he said was
this: 'Say, Seventy-one, I done my duty, didn't I?'

"I told him that he did.

"'I had my face toward 'em when they got me, didn't I?

"'Sure, you did.'

"'Well,' he went on, quite cheerful like, 'I may get through this, and
if I do, I'll have another crack at 'em. But if I don't, why I aint
got no kick comin', for there'll be others to stay here with me.'

"That was the last I saw of him, for the Red Cross man came in then,
and I went back to the firing. He was a game boy, though, wasn't he?"

[Illustration: The "Red Cross" in the Field.]

What would have become of the wounded if the Red Cross nurses had not
been on the field to help them, nobody knows, except that thousands of
"mothers' boys" were saved, who in a few hours more would have been
beyond mortal aid. No wonder bearded men wept like babies and blessed
the angels of mercy as they passed. The boys went into the fight
hungry, lay for two days in trenches, almost without food; and when
they were wounded, were ordered to make their way to the rear as best
they could. Men with desperate wounds had to walk or crawl perhaps a
mile; perhaps five or six miles, over the wild, rough country, those
who were least injured, assisting their comrades, and hundreds dying
by the wayside. Had the Red Cross been allowed its way in the
beginning, many of these horrors would have been avoided. The fe