"Sir, Sergeant Ransom reports with message from Liaison officer. All groups reached the objectives. No enemy encountered on the right, but a party on the left is believed to be returning with prisoners. We blew up their dugouts and left their front line in flames."
"Good work, boy," says the Colonel, rising and shaking the runner's hand. "You got here damn quick. Did you come by the Lincoln trench?"
"No, sir, I came over the top from the battalion post. Would have been here quicker, but two of us had to carry back one boy to that point before I could get relieved."
"Wounded?"
"No, sir,—dead."
"Who was it?" asks the young lieutenant.
"Private Kater, sir, my squad mate."
As the sergeant raised his hand in parting salute, all of us saw suspended from his right wrist a most formidable weapon, apparently of his own construction. It was a pick handle with a heavy iron knob on one end and the same end cushioned with a mass of barbed wire rolled up like a ball of yarn. He smiled as he noticed our gaze.
"It's the persuader, sir," he said. "We all carried them."
He had hardly quitted the door when another heavily breathing figure with shirt half torn off by barbed wire appeared.