"Shrapnel," he said, as he saw me looking. "And it seems a pity, too. I spent $600 on that nose, just before I came over here. They burned it, cauterized it, wired it, knifed it, and pronounced it a thorough job. And as soon as it was cleaned up, it came over here into powder and dust and got messed up by shrapnel. Now the big $600 job will have to be done over again."
This young man is Waldo Pierce, the artist. It was he who once started on a trip to Europe with a friend, but didn't like the first meal, so jumped overboard and swam back. He sailed by the next boat, and arrived on the other side to find his friend in trouble for his disappearance.
Through the side of Pierce's coat, just at the pocket, and just over the heart, I saw a bullet hole.
"Pretty stagey, isn't it?" he explained. "If it had been a ragged, irregular hole, somewhere else, say at the elbow, it would have been all right. But this neat little hole just at the vital spot is conventional stuff. It looks like the barn door, and five yards away.
"And this is worse yet," he added, as he took out from the inner breast pocket a brown leather wallet. Through one flap the same shrapnel bullet had penetrated. Together, coat and wallet had saved this young man's life.
"That's the sort of thing that wouldn't go anywhere," Pierce went on. He is a Maine man, and has a pleasant drawl.
Wheeler's car was shot through, the slatting ripped at the driver's place, the sides a mess. A man on his right and a man at his left were killed. The stuff passed over his head as he knelt before a tire. The boys have been playing in luck. A dozen fatalities were due them in the June drive at Verdun. This was the fiercest offensive of the four months, and they stood up to it.
We were looking west, and as we looked an aeroplane burst into flames. As it fell, it left a trail of black smoke, funnel shaped, and always at the point of that funnel the bright spark, and at the heart of that spark a man burning to death. The spark descended rather slowly, with a spiraling movement, and trailing the heavy smoke. It burned brightly all the way to the horizon line, where it seemed to continue for a moment, like a setting sun on the earth's rim. Then it puffed out, and only the smoke in the sky was left. In another moment the light wind had shredded the smoke away.
It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and we had been coming from Paris at full tilt to get to the Etat Major and report ourselves. So, after watering the car and shaking hands all around, we started off, and straightway the rear left tire went flat, and its successor went flat, and for the third time it went flat. So we crawled to a village at midnight, and laid by for repairs.
At 3 a.m. we rose. There was no dressing to be done, as we had rested in our clothes. We ran out past the city of Verdun on the road going east to Fort de Tavannes. Wheat was ripening to the full crop in a hundred fields about us. All the birds were singing. The pleasant stir and fullness of summer were coming down the air.