"My boy, how long has it been since you had food?" he asked.
The question, and particularly the kindly tone, were too much for the overwrought nerves of the lad.
"Forty-eight hours, sir," he responded, and then his stoicism gave way and he collapsed.
"Get something to eat here and take a sleep," said the Colonel. "You need not go back."
"No, sir," was the reply. "My company is up there in the woods, fighting hard, and I am going back to it. Captain Williams depends on me, sir."
And back he went, although he was persuaded to rest a few minutes while a lunch was prepared. He was asked to describe his experiences on that journey through the German-infested woods, but the sum of his description, given in a deprecatory manner, was: "I just crawled along and got here."
With such spirit as this actuating our men, it is small wonder that the Germans found themselves battling against a stone wall of defense that threatened momentarily to topple forward on them and crush them.
MacElroy was wounded slightly and suffered a severe case of shell shock a few days later. He was in the hospital many weeks and was awarded the French War Cross for his bravery.
Bugler MacElroy was by no means the only lad who did not eat for forty-eight hours. Those in the forward lines had entered the fight with only two days' rations. Many of them threw this away to lighten themselves for the contest. Subsequently food reached them only intermittently and in small quantities, for it was almost an impossible task to carry it up from the rear through that vortex of fighting.
Sleep they needed even more than food. For five days and nights hundreds of the men slept only for a few moments at a time, not more than three hours all told. They became as automatons, fighting on though they had lost much of the sense of feeling. It was asserted by medical men that this loss of sleep acted almost as an anesthetic on many, so that wounds that ordinarily would have incapacitated them through sheer pain, were regarded hardly at all. When opportunity offered, more than one went sound asleep on his feet, leaning against the wall of a trench.