"'Ikey, come here, my lad, our officer has clicked it.'
"I crawled over to him. He was sittin' on the ground with the Leftenant's head restin' in his lap, and was gettin' out his first-aid packet. I told him to get low or he would click it. He answered:
"'Since when does a bloomin' Lance Corporal take orders from a bloody private? You tell the rest of the boys, if there's any of them left, to leg it back to our trench at the double and get a stretcher, and you go with them. This lad of ours has got to get medical attention, an' damned quick, too, if we want to stop his bleedin'.'
"Just then a German star-shell landed about ten feet from us, an' in its white, ghostly light I could see French sittin' like a bloomin' statue, his hands covered with blood, tryin' to make a tourniquet out of a bandage an' his bayonet. I told the rest to get in an' get the stretcher. They needed no second urgin', an' soon French was left there alone, sittin' on the ground, holdin' his dyin' officer's head in his lap. A pretty picture, I call it. He sure was a man, was French; with the bullets crackin' overhead and kickin' up the dirt around him."
Just then Happy butted in with: "Were you one of the men who went in for the stretcher?"
Ikey answered: "None of your damned business. If you blokes want to hear this story through, don't interrupt."
Happy vouchsafed no answer.
"About ten minutes after the fellows left for the stretcher, French got a bullet through the left arm."
Sailor Bill interrupted here:
"How do you know it was ten minutes?"