“Did the officer leave any message?”
“No—they've bin gone some time—come on, Sammy.”
Well, I thought to myself, this IS nice. So I went down with the machine-gunners and in the dead grass just below the gully I found a wounded man: he was shot through the thigh and it had gone clean through both legs.
He was bleeding to death quickly, for it had ripped both arteries. Looking round I saw another man coming down, hopping along but very cheerful.
“In the ankle,” he said; “can you do anything?”
“I'll have a look in a minute.”
I examined the man who was hit in the thigh and discovered two tourniquets had been applied made out of a handkerchief and bits of stick to twist them up. But the blood was now pumping steadily from both wounds and soaking its way into the sandy soil. I tightened them up, but it was useless. There was no stopping the loss of blood.
All the time little groups of British went straggling past—hurrying back towards the bay—retreating.
It was impossible to leave my wounded. I helped the cheerful man to hop near a willow thicket, and there I took off his boot and found a clean bullet wound right through the ankle-bone of the left foot. It was bleeding slowly and the man was very pale.
“Been bleeding long?” I asked.