“Yes, sir,” and I saluted and went to the dugout occupied by my squad.  The men were either reading or writing letters, and not only the six, but the ten of them responded, dropping their letters and books, and asked to take part in the burial.  So we paddled through the darkness and the mud to where the body lay, and as we approached we noticed several huge rats scurrying away from it.  A hatred for the vermin almost as intense as for the Hun has possessed me ever since.  Of course, the bestiality of the latter has descended to such depths of infamy that it is impossible quite to class them with any other breed of vermin; it would be an insult even to the rat.

We dug the grave as well as we could, assisted by such light as we got from the intermittent flashes of the guns and the edge of the flare gleams sent up by the enemy every little while.  When the melancholy work was almost complete, I hurried over to the O.C. and he handed me the simple cross he had made,—­just two pieces of wood with the inscription, “William McLean, C.E.F., September 30th, 1916, R.I.P.”

“When you have finished, Grant, take the party and build up the part of your trench that was shot away this morning.”

I saluted and returned to the grave.  The boys had finished; there was nothing more on earth we could do for Billy.

“O.C. says to build up the hole in the trench that was shot away this morning; you can go, fellows; get busy and I will be with you in a minute.”  They started and I was alone.  Bitter tears again half blinded me as I placed the sign of the Christ at the grave’s head; I couldn’t place it at Billy’s, because the shell had obliterated all traces of his head.  With a short but very earnest prayer that God would help his mother and dear ones to sustain their loss and soften their grief, I hurriedly rejoined my men.  On the way over I could not help thinking how lonely it would be that night in the dugout without Billy, and memories of the hundred and one incidents connected with our toil and trouble and joy in fixing up our nest flocked through my tired mind.

They were hard at work mending the damage done at daybreak by that messenger of hell.  As I reached the spot, one of the boys remarked, “If that shell explodes before we get through, there will be no need of a grave for us.”  Very nearly fifteen hours had passed, however, since it had struck, and none of us felt there was any danger from that direction, as it was quite uncommon for any of them to burst if they had not done so within at least twelve hours, and I answered, “Oh, no, fellows, there is nothing to fear from it.”  I stepped to the back of the trench where the shell was imbedded in the parados and examined the spot.  “I guess it is there for keeps,” I said, and returned to work.  In a few minutes one or two of the boys complained of thirst, and I volunteered to get water.  I ran down the steps into my dugout, got Billy’s water bottle and my own, and doubled down to the cook’s dugout, filled them with drinking water, and was just starting back when the ground under me shook with an explosion, splinters coming from all directions, and one of them slightly wounding the cook.  I thought at first Fritz had struck an ammunition depot, so tremendous was the roar.  I grabbed the bottles and shot back to my party.