The others were all right. I went from gun to gun and found them firing steadily.
Somehow or other we tied up the subaltern and carried him along the narrow trench. Mercifully he was unconscious. We got him out at last on to a stretcher. Four men went away with it, the sergeant stumbling after. The subaltern was dead before they reached a dressing station. He left a wife and child.
There were only the junior subaltern and myself left to fight the battery. He was twenty last birthday and young at that. If I stopped anything there was only that boy between King and country and the Hun. Is any reward big enough for these babes of ours?
Perhaps God will give it. King and country won’t.
Vague forms of moving groups of men could be seen through my glasses in the neighbourhood of Essigny impossible to say whether British or German. The sun was struggling to pierce the mist. The distance was about a thousand yards. We were still firing on the S.O.S. range, as ordered.
I became aware of a strange subaltern grinning up at me out of the trench.
“Where the devil do you spring from?” said I.
He climbed out and joined me on the top, hatless, minus box respirator, cheery. Another babe.