e used it as a disguise
for just plain hard work. It means anything whatever in the way of
duty that does not have to do directly with the manning of the
trenches.

This time we clicked a burial fatigue. It was my first. I never
want another. I took a party of ten men and we set out, armed with
picks and shovels, and, of course, rifles and bandoliers (cloth
pockets containing fifty rounds of ammo).

We hiked three miles up to High Wood and in the early morning began
the job of getting some of the dead under ground. We were almost
exactly in the same place from which we had gone over after the
tanks. I kept expecting all the time to run across the bodies of
some of our own men. It was a most unpleasant feeling.

Some cleaning up had already been done, so the place was not so bad
as it had been, but it was bad enough. The advance had gone forward
so far that we were practically out of shell range, and we were
safe working.

The burial method was to dig a pit four feet deep and big enough to
hold six men. Then we packed them in. The worst part of it was that
most of the bodies were pretty far gone and in the falling away
stage. It was hard to move them. I had to put on my gas mask to
endure the stench and so did some of the other men. Some who had
done this work before rather seemed to like it.

I would search a body for identification marks and jot down the
data found on a piece of paper. When the man was buried under, I
would stick a rifle up over him and tuck the record into the trap
in the butt of the gun where the oil bottle is carried.

When the pioneers came up, they would remove the rifle and
substitute a little wooden cross with the name painted on it. The
indifference with which the men soon came to regard this burial
fatigue was amazing. I remember one incident of that first morning,
a thing that didn't seem at all shocking at the time, but which,
looking back upon it, illustrates the matter-of-factness of the
soldier's viewpoint on death.

"Hi sye, Darby," sang out one fellow. "Hi got a blighter 'ere wif
only one leg. Wot'll Hi do wif 'im?"

"Put him under with only one, you blinking idiot," said I.

Presently he called out again, this time with a little note of
satisfaction and triumph in his voice.

"Darby, Hi sye. I got a leg for that bleeder. Fits 'im perfect."

Well, I went over and took a look and to my horror found that the
fool had stuck a German leg on the body, high boot and all. I
wou