arm wounds are, the earth is black with blood. Underfoot the leaves are scratched up as though the man had been kicking.
“That’s no joke, Kat,” say I.
“No more is a shell splinter in the belly,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders.
“But don’t get tender-hearted,” says Tjaden.
All this can only have happened a little while ago, the blood is still fresh. As everybody we see there is dead we do not waste any more time, but report the affair at the next stretcher-bearers’ post. After all it is not our business to take these stretcher-bearers’ jobs away from them.
★★
A patrol has to be sent out to discover just how far the enemy position is advanced. Since my leave I feel a certain strange attachment to the other fellows, and so I volunteer to go with them. We agree on a plan, slip out through the wire and then divide and creep forward separately. After a while I find a shallow shell-hole and crawl into it. From here I peer forward.
There is moderate machine-gun fire. It sweeps
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