bodies that but yesterday had housed the personality of a
friend by whom we had warmed ourselves. If you had gathered the stock
of a thousand butcher-shops, cut it into small pieces and strewn it
about, it would give you a faint conception of the shambles those
trenches were.

One did not ask the whereabouts of brother or chum. If we did not see
him, then it were best to hope that he were of the dead.

It were folly to look over the parapet, for nearly every shell-hole
contained a wounded man, and, poor fellow, he would wave to show his
whereabouts; and though we could not help him, it would attract the
attention of the Huns, who still had shells to spare--so that the
wounded might not fight again.

I have found the Bavarian even worse than the Prussian, and this day,
and the next, and again, did they sweep No Man's Land with machine-guns
and shrapnel, so as to kill the wounded.

When darkness came the second night, we had organized parties of
rescue, but we still had practically no stretchers, and the most of the
men had to be carried in on our backs.

I went out to the bridge, and in between machine-gun bursts began to
pull down that heap of dead. Not all were dead, for in some of the
bodies that formed that pyramid life was breathing. Some were
conscious but too weak to struggle from out that weight of flesh.
Machine-guns were still playing on this spot, and after we had lost
half of our rescuing party, we were forbidden to go here again, as live
men were too scarce.

But the work of rescue did not cease. Two hundred men were carried in
from a space less in area than an acre.

One lad, who looked about fifteen, called to me: "Don't leave me, sir."
I said, "I will come back for you, sonny," as I had a man on my back at
the time. In that waste of dead one wounded man was like a gem in
sawdust--just as hard to find. Four trips I made before I found him,
then it was as if I had found my own young brother. Both his legs were
broken, and he was only a schoolboy, one of those overgrown lads who
had added a couple of years in declaring his age to get into the army.
But the circumstances brought out his youth, and he clung to me as
though I were his father. Nothing I have ever done has given me the
joy that the rescuing of that lad did, and I do not even know his name.
He was the only one who did not say: "Take the other fellow first."

There were men who were forty-eight hours without food or drink,
withou