But aside from this paradoxical attitude, they frequently speak and act in the most simple, touching way!  It is common to hear one say to the stretcher-bearer who comes to fetch him:  “Take my comrade here first; he is much more wounded than I; I can wait....”  And that when it means lying on the ground under the bombardment, thirsty, feverish, feeling his strength ebb with his blood.  Before any one comes back to get him, often he will try again, if he has a sound arm left, to fire his rifle or his machine-gun once more.  Glory surrounds the epic incident of the trench where the only unwounded soldier, seeing the enemy arrive, cried out as if in delirium:  “Arise, ye dead!” and the dying really rose, and succeeded, some of them, in firing once more before they fell again, and the assailants fled.  A more recent and simpler deed is also worth recording.

[Sidenote:  A dead observer protects his pilot.]

Returning from a bombardment of the enemy’s factories in broad daylight, a French machine conducted by two men was attacked by several aviators.  The observer, hit by a ball in the chest, dropped down into the carlingue.  The pilot seeing this prepared to turn back.  But hearing his machine-gun firing again, he concluded that the observer was not seriously hurt.  As soon as he landed in France:  “Well, what about that wound?” he asked.  No answer.  He bent down and saw that his companion was dead.  Even in his agony he had continued to protect his comrade.

In the beginning of the War the wounded stayed a long, a very long time without being rescued, at the place where they fell, or in the shelter to which they had been able to crawl.  Our stretcher-bearers of the American Ambulance found, after the battle of the Marne, many who had lain for days and nights in shell holes, at the foot of trees, in ruined barns or churches!  One may guess what the mortality might be!  Today, happily, it is no longer so.  The field of action is more restricted and the aid is better organized.

[Sidenote:  Transportation is painful and dangerous.]

[Sidenote:  Relief at the first dressing station.]

[Sidenote:  The nurses devoted and the sufferers resigned.]

If transportation, however, is less retarded than three years ago, it is still painful and rather dangerous.  Even when a special passage has been dug before the attack for the evacuation of the wounded, all jolts are not avoided in this dark and narrow way; but in going through the ordinary passage-ways, dangerous and unseen obstacles are often encountered—­crumbling earth, perhaps, or convoys going in the opposite direction.  If they heeded the wounded soldier, the stretcher-bearers would go on open ground.  This he frequently does, if he is at all able to get on without aid; once hit he thinks himself invulnerable—­a singular illusion which has brought about many catastrophes.  At the first dressing-station and at the front hospital,