"It's all right, old man," said the soldier in front. "I'll try and be as easy as I can."
We stood against the wall of the trench to let them go by. Opposite us they came to a dead stop. The wounded man was stripped to the waist, and a bandage, white at one time but now red with blood, was tied round his shoulder. His face was white and drawn except over his cheek bones. There the flesh, tightly drawn, glowed crimson as poppies.
"Have you any water to spare, chummy?" he asked.
"We've been told not to give water to wounded men," I said.
"I know that," he answered. "But just a drop to rinse out my mouth! I've lain out between the lines all night. Just to rinse my mouth, chummy!"
I drew the cork from my water bottle and held it to his lips, he took a mouthful, paused irresolutely for a moment and a greedy light shone in his eyes. Then he spat the water on the floor of the trench.
"Thank you, chummy, thank you," he said, and the sorrowful journey was resumed.
Where the road from the village is cut through by the trench we came on a stretcher lying on the floor. On it lay a man, or rather, part of a man, for both his arms had been blown off near the shoulders. A waterproof ground sheet, covered with mud lay across him, the two stumps stuck out towards the stretcher-poles. One was swathed in bandages, the other had come bare, and a white bone protruded over a red rag which I took to be a first field dressing. Two men who had been busy helping the wounded all morning and the night before carried the stretcher to here, through the tortuous cutting. One had now dropped out, utterly exhausted. He lay in the trench, covered with blood from head to foot and gasping. His mate smoked a cigarette leaning against the revêtement.
"Reliefs?" he asked, and we nodded assent.
"These are the devil's own trenches," he said. "The stretcher must be carried at arms length over the head all the way, even an empty stretcher cannot be carried through here."