I remember a little man whose arm was in a sling. A doctor was looking at his papers, and said:
“You have a wound in your right arm?”
And the man replied so modestly:
“Oh! it is not a wound. It is only a hole!”
In one corner of the tent they were giving out food and drink. A cook was carving slices of beef and cutting up a round of cheese. The wounded seized the food with their muddy and blood-stained hands; and they were eating slowly and with evident relish. The inference was plain. Many were suffering primarily from hunger and thirst. They sat timidly on a bench like some very poor guests at a buffet during a garden party.
In front of them there were a score of wounded Germans who had been placed there indiscriminately. They were dozing or throwing hungry glances on the food and the pails of steaming tea. Hitting on a popular slang expression, a grey-haired infantryman, who was munching large pieces of boiled beef, said suddenly to the cook:
“Hang it all! Why not give them a piece of bully-beef?”
“Do you know them then?” said the cook jocularly.
“Do I know them! The poor devils! We have been punching each other the whole blessed day. Chuck them a piece of meat. Why not?”
A frivolous young man, short-sighted, with a turned-up nose, added in a tense voice: