“We all got up with the exception of my chum.  I did not for a minute imagine he had been hit, but merely thought he was making sure that the sniper had finished, so I touched him—­and he half rolled towards me.  I lifted him up and said, ‘Did you catch it?’ All he could do was to point to his chin.  He was an awful sight.  A dum-dum or explosive bullet had caught his jawbone and had blown the left lower jaw and part of the neck away.  I realised at once that it was hopeless, for it took four bandages to stop the spurting.  One of our fellows ran off for the stretcher-bearers.  One of these came back, but he could not stop the flow of blood at all, and the corporal said, ’No good:  it will all be over in a minute.’  I could not believe it at all—­it did not seem possible to me that George with whom I had spent every hour, every day in close companionship for so many months past, was dying.

“The party went on and I was left alone, but I risked all chances of court martial and stayed with my wounded friend.  I couldn’t leave him until I was absolutely certain that he was past all aid.  He did not last very many minutes, and I knelt there with my arm round his shoulders, hoping against hope that something could be done.  He was called to pay the supreme sacrifice of all.  And with just one gasp he died.

“I was in a terrible condition.  My clothes were soaked in blood, my hands all red, my mind numbed.  Nothing could be done, so I went and joined my company, but first made application to the sergeant-major that I might help to bury my chum.  This was granted, and as three other men were killed that evening, a party of us were detailed to make graves for them.  I can see now those four graves in a square, railed off by barbed wire, on the cross-roads between St. Jean and St. Julien.  On one corner stood an estaminet and trenches ran all round.  A chaplain was passing, and we had a service of a minute or two.  The time was about 2 o’clock on Saturday morning.  We were only able to dig down a couple of feet, and these graves must, I fear, have suffered from the heavy shelling which followed, but I like to think that my chum still rests there undisturbed.

“How I got back to the barn that night I do not know.  I certainly was not my natural self, and it was more a stagger than a march.  It was impossible to realise that I should see George no more.  And on the following day I had to face the still harder task of writing to his parents and to the girl he had left behind.”

To this, written by Sydney Baxter, I add nothing.  Not to me has it come to dig a shallow, shell-swept grave for my chum.  What words, then, have I?

One Young Man Receives a Letter

CHAPTER VI