They did it, too. Theatrical? Isn't it just splendidly boyish? They did it, you see. The first of them to die, a young sub-lieutenant, was found afterward, his red, white and blue plume trampled in the mud, his brave white gloves stained with his own hot young blood. Another of these St. Cyr boys, shot in the face hideously and unable to speak, stood still under fire and wrote his orders to his men. It was his first day under fire.
A boy fell injured between the barbed wire in front of his trench and the enemy, in that No Man's Land of so many tragedies. His comrades, afraid of hitting him, stopped firing.
"Go on!" he called to them. "No matter about me. Shoot at them!"
So they fired, and he writhed for a moment.
"I got one of yours that time!" he said.
The Germans retired, but the boy still lay on the ground, beyond reach. He ceased moving, and they thought he was dead. One may believe that they hoped he was dead. It was more merciful than the slow dying of No Man's Land. But after a time he raised his head.
"Look out," he called. "They are coming again. They are almost up to me!"
That is all of that story.