He went in a Marine in full battle dress; he came out a skeleton....
Now four marines were beside me. A growl rose from the others. I had to yell at them, over my shoulder: "Stand fast! Do you want the same thing to happen to you?"
The four men beside me—I didn't look to see who they were—simply waited.
"Okay, just be careful not to touch any of the shadows," I said. "Apparently that's where the danger is."
Not a shadow moved, not even the one through which Yount had gone to his death. The five of us then, rose and moved straight forward. As we came close I could smell something in the shadows, a vague, pestilential odor, like nothing I had ever experienced.
"I smelled its like, sir," said one, Haggerty, I think, "where men lay too long unburied. This is just a far hint, but it's like it, some way."
We went around the detached shadow. There was no sound, even in our walkie-talkies, now. It was almost as if, honoring an ancient military custom, the Shadow Men were allowing us to collect our dead. I could not see into or through the shadow. It was still so shapeless, even when I was close enough to touch it, that I could not tell anything of its true nature, or whether it, or any of the Shadow Men behind it, were armed. I could see the result of too much impetuosity, however, in the skeleton—snow-white, as if it were that of a man long dead in the burning desert sands—of PFC Yount. I tried to remember, as the others carefully gathered up the skeleton—Haggerty later said it was still warm!—whether Yount had uttered any sound, but could not remember.