at, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's
clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there
under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's
waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two
stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the
dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.
Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the
ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066)
lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a
youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on
the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in
something else, a problem which he failed to solve.

One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless
body in the trench.

"Brothers," he said.

For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.
Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It
might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a
sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under
to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would
come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who
was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the
bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.

The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church,
but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made
matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.

"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, (p. 067)
who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a
hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to
duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.

"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even
when I read it in the papers at home, but now--"

"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer,
"and they always keep potting at the place."

"But have we?"

"I dunno."

"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of
mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes
the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"

"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary
way," was the non