And during the slow agony which lasted a half hour he did not stop following attentively the progress of his men on the conquered positions.
Stretcher-bearers carried his body to the church in Éclusier.
We buried him simply on the hill at the east of Cappy in a military cemetery near the canal.
When the news of his death was known in the battalion, I know more than a hundred who had seen their best comrades fall beside them, who wept as though they had lost their fathers....
He was with us only a month.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ATTACK
We had been talking about it for months. The hour of the great attack has finally come.
They have been preparing for it ever since we were transformed into diggers and sappers who dug trenches, parallels, communication trenches, and saps, day and night.