"The living must respect the dead, Jean Le Locard."
"I am poor," muttered Le Locard. "We Bretons are born to misery and sorrow. Life is very hard. Is it any harm if I sell these bones and brasses to a rich man, and buy a little bread for my wife and little ones?"
The coastguard shook his head gravely: "We Bretons may go hungry and naked, but we cannot traffic in death. Here lies a soldier, a hundred years hidden under the gorse. Nevertheless—"
He touched his cap in salute. Slowly the peasants lifted their caps and stood staring down at the bones, uncovered.
"Make a grave," said the coastguard simply. He pointed up at the old graveyard on the cliff above us. Then, touching my elbow, he turned away with me toward the little hamlet across the moors.
"Let us find the Curé," he murmured. "We men of the sea should salute the death God sends with the respect we owe to all His gifts to man."
Our three gigantic shadows led us back across the moor,—my dog, myself, and the gray-eyed silent man who knew the sea,—and something perhaps, of the sea's Creator:—and much of his fellow men.
[signed] Robert W. Chambers
Jim—A Soldier of the King
We were machine gunners of the British Army stationed "Somewhere in France" and had just arrived at our rest billets, after a weary march from the front line sector.