my equipment, but I couldn't unfasten a buckle with my
useless arm, so I asked him if he couldn't see I was wounded. He
seemed to understand what I meant, and unbuckled my straps and took
everything off me, very gently, too, and whipped out my bandage and
was putting it on my shoulder with considerable skill, I thought, and
certainly with a gentle hand--when the order came from their officer
to move us on, for the shells were falling all around us.

Unfortunately for me, my guard did not come with us, nor did I ever
see him again. One of the others reached over and took my knife,
cutting the string as unconcernedly as if I wanted him to have
it, and I remember that this one had a saw-bayonet on his gun, as
murderous and cruel-looking a weapon as any one could imagine, and
he had a face to match it, too. So in the first five minutes I saw
the two kinds of Germans.

When we were out of the worst of the shell-fire, we stopped to rest,
and, a great dizziness coming over me, I sat down with my head
against a tree, and looked up at the trailing rags of clouds that
drifted across the sky. It was then about four o'clock of as pleasant
an afternoon as I can ever remember. But the calmness of the sky,
with its deep blue distance, seemed to shrivel me up into nothing.
The world was so bright, and blue, and--uncaring!

I may have fallen asleep for a few minutes, for I thought I heard
McKelvey saying, "Dad always told me not to let this happen." Over
and over again, I could hear this, but I don't know whether McKelvey
had repeated it. My brain was like a phonograph that sticks at one
word and says it over and over again until some one stops it.

I think it was Mudge, of Grand Forks, who came over to see how I was.
His voice sounded thin and far away, and I didn't answer him. Then I
felt him taking off my overcoat and finishing the bandaging that the
German boy had begun.

Little Joe, the Italian boy, often told me afterwards how I looked
at that time. "All same dead chicken not killed right and kep' long
time."

Here those who were not so badly wounded were marched on, but there
were ten of us so badly hit we had to go very slowly. Percy Weller,
one of the boys from Trail who enlisted when I did, was with us, and
when we began the march I was behind him and noticed three holes
in the back of his coat; the middle one was a horrible one made by
shrapnel. He staggered painfully, poor chap, and his left eye was
gone!

We passe