ous,
some of them strangely and terribly conscious, with a look in their eyes
as though staring at the death which sat near to them, and edged nearer.

"Yes," said the M. O., "they look bad, some of 'em, but youth is on
their side. I dare say seventy-five per cent. will get through. If it
wasn't for gas gangrene--"

He jerked his head to a boy sitting up in bed, smiling at the nurse who
felt his pulse.

"Looks fairly fit after the knife, doesn't he? But we shall have to cut
higher up. The gas again. I'm afraid he'll be dead before to-morrow.
Come into the operating-theater. It's very well equipped."

I refused that invitation. I walked stiffly out of the Butcher's Shop
of Corbie past the man who had lost both arms and both legs, that vital
trunk, past rows of men lying under blankets, past a stench of mud and
blood and anesthetics, to the fresh air of the gateway, where a column
of ambulances had just arrived with a new harvest from the fields of the
Somme.

"Come in again, any time!" shouted out the cheery colonel, waving his
hand.

I never went again, though I saw many other Butcher's Shops in the years
that followed, where there was a great carving of human flesh which
was of our boyhood, while the old men directed their sacrifice, and the
profiteers grew rich, and the fires of hate were stoked up at patriotic
banquets and in editorial chairs.

X

The failure on the left hardly balanced by the partial success on the
right caused a sudden pause in the operations, camouflaged by small
attacks on minor positions around and above Fricourt and Mametz. The
Lincolns and others went over to Fricourt Wood and routed out German
machine-gunners. The West Yorks attacked the sunken road at Fricourt.
The Dorsets, Manchesters, Highland Light Infantry, Lancashire Fusiliers,
and Borderers of the 32d Division were in possession of La Boisselle and
clearing out communication trenches to which the Germans were hanging
on with desperate valor. The 21st Division--Northumberland Fusiliers,
Durhams, Yorkshires-were making a flanking attack on Contalmaison,
but weakened after their heavy losses on the first day of battle. The
fighting for a time was local, in small copses--Lozenge Wood, Peak
Wood, Caterpillar Wood, Acid Drop Copse--where English and German troops
fought ferociously for yards of ground, hummocks of earth, ditches.

G. H. Q. had been shocked by the disaster on the left and the failure of
all the big hopes t