n at last my men came back--those of them who had received the
order," said the colonel, "I knew the price of their achievement--its
cost in officers and men." He spoke as a man resentful of that bloody
sacrifice.

There were other men still alive and still holding on. With some of them
were four young officers, who clung to their ground all through the
next night, before being relieved. They were without a drop of water and
suffered the extreme miseries of the battlefield.

There was no distinction in courage between those four men, but the
greater share of suffering was borne by one. Early in the day he had had
his jaw broken by a piece of shell, but still led his men. Later in the
day he was wounded in the shoulder and leg, but kept his command, and he
was still leading the survivors of his company when he came back on the
morning of Tuesday, August 10th.

Another party of men had even a longer time of trial. They were under
the command of a lance-corporal, who had gained possession of the
stables above the Menin road and now defended their ruins. During
the previous twenty-four hours he had managed to send through several
messages, but they were not to report his exposed position nor to ask
for supports nor to request relief. What he said each time was, "Send
us more bombs." It was only at seven-thirty in the morning of Tuesday,
after thirty hours under shell-fire, that the survivors came away from
their rubbish heap in the lines of death.

So it was at Hooge on that day of August. I talked with these men,
touched hands with them while the mud and blood of the business still
fouled them. Even now, in remembrance, I wonder how men could go through
such hours without having on their faces more traces of their hell,
though some of them were still shaking with a kind of ague.

X

Here and there on the roadsides behind the lines queer sacks hung from
wooden poles. They had round, red disks painted on them, and looked like
the trunks of human bodies after Red Indians had been doing decorative
work with their enemy's slain. At Flixecourt, near Amiens, I passed one
on a Sunday when bells were ringing for high mass and a crowd of young
soldiers were trooping into the field with fixed bayonets.

A friend of mine--an ironical fellow--nudged me, and said,
"Sunday-school for young Christians!" and made a hideous face, very
comical.

It was a bayonet-school of instruction, and "O. C. Bayonets"--Col.
Ronald Campb