Often you asked the same question yourself with parched and burning lips.
One after another we came upon the wounded. Here a man dragging a broken leg along with him. Here a man holding his fractured fore-arm and running towards us. Sometimes the pitiful cry, faint and full of agony: “Stretchers! Stretcher-bearers!” away in some densely overgrown defile swept with bullets and shrapnel.
And so at last all my squads had turned back with stretchers loaded with men and pieces of men. I went on alone—a lonely figure wandering about the mountains, looking and listening for the wounded.
I came now upon a party of Engineers at work making a road. They were working with pick-axe and spade—clearing away bush and rocks.
“Any water?” they asked.
I shook my head.
“Any wounded?” I said.
“Some down there, they say,” said a red-faced man.
“Damn rotten job that,” muttered another, as I went on.
“Better keep well over in the bushes,” shouted the red-faced man. “They've got this bit of light-coloured ground marked—you're almost sure ter git plugged.”