“A pretty dreary sight, too, was the field of the dead, as I called it.  As the bodies were brought in they were laid in long rows, until there was no more room without moving a supply depot.  So there was nothing to do but begin to pile them two deep.  A service-corps man took off each man’s metal identification tag and tossed it into an ammunition box.  One box was already full and a second half full.  Chink-chink-chink—­tags of the rich man’s son and the poor man’s son, the doctor of philosophy and the illiterate; chink-chink-chink—­a life each time.  They’ll take the tags to the staff office and tired clerks will find the names that go with the numbers.”

“You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs,” said Peterkin, quoting high authority.  “Some have to be killed.”

“The last I heard from home my wife and one of the children were sick and my employer had gone bankrupt,” broke in the very tired voice rather irrelevantly.

“Yes, my father’s last letter was pretty blue about business,” said the banker’s son.  He was looking at his dirty hands.  The odor of clothes unlaundered for weeks, in which the men had slept, tortured his sensitive nostrils.  “A millionaire and filthy as swine in a sty!” he exclaimed.  “Digging like a navvy in order to get admission to the abattoir!”

“Were there any reserves coming our way?” asked the barber’s son.

“Yes, masses.”

“Perhaps they will relieve us and we’ll go into the reserves for a while,” suggested the very tired voice.

“No fear!” growled Pilzer.

“They have called out the old men, the fellows of forty-five to fifty, who were supposed to be out of it for good,” said the judge’s son.  “Westerling says they are to guard prisoners and property when we cross the range and start on the march to the Browns’ capital.  Then all the other men can be on the firing-line and force the war to a mercifully quick end with a minimum loss.  I saw numbers of them just arriving at La Tir, footsore and limping.”

“I know.  Mine’s been indoor work, making paints,” said the very tired voice.  “When you’ve had long hours in the shop and had to sit up late with sick babies, you aren’t fit for marching.  And I think I’ve got lead-poisoning.”

“Whew!” The judge’s son put his hand over his nose as a breeze sprang up from the direction of the Brown lines.

“I thought we got them all,” said the barber’s son.

“Must have missed one that was buried by a shell and another shell must have dug him up!” muttered Pilzer, glaring at the barber’s son.  “It’s not nice on people with ladylike nostrils.  James, get the eau de cologne and draw his bath for our plutocrat!”

“You see, something had to be done about the dead between the redoubts,” explained the barber’s son, “though the officers on both sides were against it.”

“Naturally.  It afforded opportunities for observation,” put in Peterkin, repeating the colonel’s words.