In trying to do so they had had astounding escapes. Several of them had been blown as far as ten yards by the air-pressure of exploding shells and had been buried in the scatter of earth.
“When at last my men came back—those of them who had received the order,” said the colonel, “I knew the price of their achievement—its cost in officers and men.” He spoke as a man resentful of that bloody sacrifice.
There were other men still alive and still holding on. With some of them were four young officers, who clung to their ground all through the next night, before being relieved. They were without a drop of water and suffered the extreme miseries of the battlefield.
There was no distinction in courage between those four men, but the greater share of suffering was borne by one. Early in the day he had had his jaw broken by a piece of shell, but still led his men. Later in the day he was wounded in the shoulder and leg, but kept his command, and he was still leading the survivors of his company when he came back on the morning of Tuesday, August 10th.
Another party of men had even a longer time of trial. They were under the command of a lance-corporal, who had gained possession of the stables above the Menin road and now defended their ruins. During the previous twenty-four hours he had managed to send through several messages, but they were not to report his exposed position nor to ask for supports nor to request relief. What he said each time was, “Send us more bombs.” It was only at seven-thirty in the morning of Tuesday, after thirty hours under shell-fire, that the survivors came away from their rubbish heap in the lines of death.
So it was at Hooge on that day of August. I talked with these men, touched hands with them while the mud and blood of the business still fouled them. Even now, in remembrance, I wonder how men could go through such hours without having on their faces more traces of their hell, though some of them were still shaking with a kind of ague.
X
Here and there on the roadsides behind the lines queer sacks hung from wooden poles. They had round, red disks painted on them, and looked like the trunks of human bodies after Red Indians had been doing decorative work with their enemy's slain. At Flixecourt, near Amiens, I passed one on a Sunday when bells were ringing for high mass and a crowd of young soldiers were trooping into the field with fixed bayonets.
A friend of mine—an ironical fellow—nudged me, and said, “Sunday-school for young Christians!” and made a hideous face, very comical.