The mechanical transport supplied them with a small car and they started on their strange mission. They pulled up a few miles back of the firing line and tramped silently across the fields, the colonel still clutching the roses, until they came to a spot where a number of Tommies were standing by four open graves which they had just dug. Beside the graves rested four shapeless bundles covered with blankets.
"Do you know the burial service?" the colonel asked Jack suddenly.
"I'm afraid I don't remember it well enough to repeat it," Jack replied.
"It doesn't matter much," he went on thoughtfully, "I can say it myself."
The men got ready with their ropes to lower the packages, one by one, into their respective resting places. It was all that was left of four gallant officers of a gallant battalion. The colonel repeated the burial service from memory, word for word:
"Ashes to ashes—dust to dust..."
But before the earth closed over them he stood at the foot of each grave, silent as the grave itself, and dropping a rose tenderly upon each stood at attention, his right hand at the "salute." As the earth fell dully upon the blankets he turned away with tears in his eyes and said simply:
"Poor brave chaps! I loved them all! God keep them. They did their duty!"
It was ten o'clock at night as Reggy and I, crossing the tracks at the Gare Maritime in Boulogne, saw a battalion which had just disembarked from the cross-channel boat drawn up on the quay, ready to entrain for the front.
We walked toward them in a spirit of idle curiosity—for the sight was one to which we were well accustomed—when, under the dim light of a partly shaded street lamp, we noticed that they were from home. We approached a little group of officers who were chatting animatedly together, and among them found several whom we knew.