Taking the Salute
A troop train with a thousand Belgian soldiers came in. They looked terribly dirty, but awfully earnest. They seemed delighted to meet an Englishman, and always wanted to shake hands. I reckon I shook hands with a couple of hundred of them. When they saw an English officer they jumped to the salute. As they passed a major of one of the Scottish regiments who was lying on a stretcher, having been shot in the chest twice, and also other parts, they saluted him, too. The major, although he was very weak, cried to his orderly, “Hold me up. I can’t take a salute lying down.” His orderly told him he was too ill to move, but he persisted, and he was propped up, and acknowledged the salutes, with hardly sufficient strength to hold his hand to his forehead. It was a pathetic sight: Anonymous.