of killing, and Andy—Andy with his arm and half his side torn off, telling him to take the others. Andy’s lips telling them to leave him, but his eyes asking dumbly to be taken too. “I’m pretending to be damned brave, old man,” the eyes had said, “and I hope the men believe me—but surely you can see what I want.” He called himself a liar for thinking Andy hadn’t been afraid to die. “I’m afraid, Tagg,” the eyes had said, “afraid of dying here away among these bloody Bosches. Oh, take my body back anyway and bury me with my own people.” He supposed those queer feelings he had always laughed at, were strongest in the end—and he hadn’t been able to get the body in. Andy had died on the Bosche parapet and he’d had the wounded to bring in, and that was the end of it all. He would never see Andy again, never stumble into the dugout to talk the world over with him, never drink with him in the jolly old billet, nor argue about art and lose his temper with him—never—never again. He felt he could have given all the rest if only Andy had been left—damned selfish—but he wouldn’t have cared. What a bloody war it was. What was the sense of it all? And he used to think war was good fun—but then Andy had been there to enjoy it with him. Why couldn’t he die too?
