Von Senborn stopped swearing and asked Ian if he was alive.
"Yes," he answered.
"Then go and see what they've got there. I can't move till I've had something," he groaned loudly.
"Can't I help you?"
"Only that." And he lay back, yelling for the surgeon.
Ian went up to what he had supposed was a hillock and found it to be a heap of stones and debris--the remains of the church tower. Only the top part had fallen; the rest loomed up, jagged and broken.
Several of the Germans squatted round a body, so limp that every bone of it must have been smashed.
"A Russian, sir," said the man who held the water-bottle. "He fell with the tower."
They rifled the dead man's pockets, turning over his broken body with as scant care as if it had been a lump of beef. They contained little; an old man's photograph; one of a girl with a broad face and small eyes, and a slip of paper. Nothing more.
Von Senborn joined them, staggering but alert. He took the slip of paper and glanced at it by the light of an electric torch. Then he handed it to the haggard subaltern.