“Who were they? But you don’t know our names yet, do you? You didn’t see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Nor Sergeant Hicks, the fat fellow?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Where are you hurt?”
“Abdominal. I can’t tell anything without a light. I lost my flash light. It never occurred to me that it could make trouble; it’s one I use at home, when the babies are sick,” the doctor murmured.
Claude tried to strike a match, with no success. “Wait a minute, where’s your helmet?” He took off his metal hat, held it over the doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it. The wounded man had already loosened his trousers, and now he pulled up his bloody shirt. His groin and abdomen were torn on the left side. The wound, and the stretcher on which he lay, supported a mass of dark, coagulated blood that looked like a great cow’s liver.
“I guess I’ve got mine,” the Doctor murmured as the match went out.
Claude struck another. “Oh, that can’t be! Our fellows will be back pretty soon, and we can do something for you.”
“No use, Lieutenant. Do you suppose you could strip a coat off one of those poor fellows? I feel the cold terribly in my intestines. I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it’s buried.”
Claude stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside, and began feeling about in the mud for the brandy. He wondered why the poor man wasn’t screaming with pain. The firing on the hill had ceased, except for the occasional
