All this passed in a moment of time, and then we decided that it would be better if we paired up, two men taking one box of ammunition.  This offered a smaller target for the busy enemy, and also made for increased speed in covering the remaining ground.

We sprang up once more and dodged and doubled as we leaped through the rain of bullets, machine gun and rifle.  How we lived I don’t know.  I was sharing a box with a lad whom I heard the fellows call Bob.  He was no more than a boy, but we were much of a size and ran light.  We were the only two of the twenty-nine left on our feet.  To-day I am one of five of that bunch left alive.

About fifty yards from the trench we dropped for a last rest before the final spurt which would decide the whole course of events in the next ten minutes.  Would we reach that trench and turn in our box of ammunition, or would we “get ours” and would the boys so eagerly waiting for us be surrounded and captured?  Or would many of them do what they had threatened?  “If it comes to surrendering,” several had said in my hearing, “I will run a bayonet into myself rather than be taken.”

When a man is lying close to the ground there is not so very great a chance of his being hit by bullets.  They pass overhead as a rule.  It is when a man is kneeling or standing, or between the two positions that the great danger lies.  The lad Bob and I were just in the act of rising when mine came along.  I felt no more than a stinging blow in the right shoulder, a searing cut and a thud of pain as the bullet exploded in leaving my body.  I fell on my face and blood gushed from my shoulder.

“Hit hard or soft?” queried my companion, as he threw himself down beside me.

“Don’t know,” I gasped.

“You’re hit in the mouth,” he said, as the blood poured from between my lips.

“No, by gum, you’re hit in the back!”

I gasped, nearly choked, and spluttered out:  “You’re a liar; I’m not hit in the back.”  But there was a gash in the back where the exploding missile had torn away and carried out portions of my lung and bits of bone and flesh.

I closed my eyes.  Then from a distance I heard Bob speak.

“I’m going to fix you,” he said, and knelt beside me.  He got into such a position that his own body shielded me from any of the enemy bullets.  It was a marvelous piece of bravery; less has earned a Victoria Cross.

He turned me round so that my head was toward our reserves and my feet were toward the Germans.  In almost all cases when a man is hit he falls forward with his face to the enemy.  In all probability he will become unconscious.  When he awakes he remembers that he fell forward.  A blind instinct works within him and makes him strive to turn around.  He knows danger lies ahead, but friend and safety are back of him.

Bob shifted me round.  “Remember,” he whispered, “that if you should faint, when you come to you are placed right.  You are in the right direction—­don’t turn round.”