and a white bone protruded over a
red rag which I took to be a first field dressing. Two men who had
been busy helping the wounded all morning and the night before carried
the stretcher to here, through the tortuous cutting. One had now
dropped out, utterly exhausted. He lay in the trench, covered with
blood from head to foot and gasping. His mate smoked a cigarette
leaning against the revetement.

"Reliefs?" he asked, and we nodded assent. (p. 204)

"These are the devil's own trenches," he said. "The stretcher must be
carried at arms length over the head all the way, even an empty
stretcher cannot be carried through here."

"Can we go out on the road?" asked one of my mates; an Irishman
belonging to another section.

"It'll be a damned sorry road for you if you go out. They're always
shelling it."

"Who is he?" I asked pointing to the figure on the stretcher. He was
unconscious; morphia, that gift of Heaven, had temporarily relieved
him of his pain.

"He's an N.C.O., we found him lying out between the trenches," said
the stretcher-bearer. "He never lost consciousness. When we tried to
raise him, he got up to his feet and ran away, yelling. The pain must
have been awful."

"Has the trench been captured?"

"Of course it has," said the stretcher-bearer, an ironical smile
hovering around his eyes. "It has been a grand victory. Trench taken
by Territorials, you'll see in the papers. And there'll be pictures
too, of the gallant charge. Heavens! they should see between the (p. 205)
trenches where the men are blown to little pieces."

The cigarette which he held between his blood-stained fingers dropped
to the ground; he did not seem to notice it fall.

We carried the wounded man out to the road and took our way down
towards Givenchy. The route was very quiet; now and then a rifle
bullet flew by; but apart from that there was absolute peace. We
turned in on the Brick Pathway and had got half way down when a shell
burst fifty yards behind us. There was a moment's pause, a shower of
splinters flew round and above us, the stretcher sank towards the
ground and almost touched. Then as if all of us had become suddenly
ashamed of some intended action, we straightened our backs and walked
on. We placed the stretcher on a table in the dressing-room and turned
back. Two days later the armless man died in hospital.

The wounded were still coming out; we met another party comprised of
our own men.