"How can it be possible?"
"I can't tell you."
For one minute he reflects. Then, suddenly, he bursts out:
"They will never learn any sense! So many hand grenades for each hundred yards! Whether the hundred yards are more or less exposed, they do not care! Without you, P. C., and me things would get desperate. But I'll keep an eye open."
There he stands erect, the nostrils of his big nose vibrating, flushed and eager, with his air of a natural leader. One more minute he ponders, and then:
"So long!" he says, and stamps away.
"I'm not going to let you go out in a rain of shrapnel like this," I cry, and try to hold him back. But he is not to be dissuaded, and storms out into the pelting rain of shells and bullets. Instantly the sound of his steps is lost in the roar of the iron downpour.
I pause for a moment. What can I do? This is such an everyday incident. Impending death is nothing in the least extraordinary. So, while the various sounds of war mingle in one single note, clamorous, huge, colossal, I resume my MS. and will tell a few of the "preliminary facts" Sergeant Young is so eager to know.