Then Hungry carried on: "French, I'm goin' to ask you a mighty personal question, and I know you'll answer it. How in hell did you, hit in the left arm, bring Leftenant Williams back from that reconnoiterin' patrol?"
French got a little red, an' answered: "Well, you see, boys, it was this way. Ikey an' I stuck out there with him, an' taking the slings from our rifles, Ikey made a sort of a rope which he put around my shoulder an' under the arms of the Leftenant, an' Ikey gettin' the Leftenant by the legs, we managed to get him into the trench. You know, I got a D.C.M. out of the affair, because I was the Corporal in charge. Damned unfair, I call it, for they only handed him the Military Medal. If the true facts were known he was the bloke who deserved the D.C.M."
They all turned in Ikey's direction. Sailor Bill, in his interest, had released his hold on Ikey's tunic and Ikey had disappeared.
Happy asked French if the Leftenant had died in No Man's Land. French, with tears in his eyes, answered: "No, but the poor lad went West after we got him to the first aid dressin' station, an' next day we buried him in the little cemetery at Fromelles. He sure done his bit, all right, blime me, and here I am, bloomin' well swankin' with a ribbon on my chest."
A dead silence fell on the crowd. Each one of them was admirin' the modesty of those two real men, French an' Ikey. But such is the way in the English Army,—the man who wins the medal always says that the other fellow deserved it. An' German Kultur is still wonderin' why it cannot smash through the English Lines.
THE FUSILIER GIANTS UNDER FIRE