"'Did they wing you?' I asked. And even as I spoke, he staggered against the wall and turned round so that I saw him full in the face. There was a hole in the other side, just at the cheek bone, that I could have put my finger in. He had been shot clear through the head.
"'Poor chap,' I said, and lifted him over behind the chimney, where I had been. He didn't speak. I left him there and went to the door, thinking that I might see a Red Cross nurse somewhere about, and sure enough, there was one bending over a man stretched on the ground. It was the major who had been giving us the ranges.
"'Is he hurt bad?' I asked.
"The Red Cross man had the major's shirt open, looking at his wound. 'He's shot through the heart,' he said.
"'Can you come in here a minute, when you get through with him? There's a Thirteenth boy just been hit.'
"'Hit where?'
"'In the head.'
"'Hold him by the jowls,' he said, 'until I come,' So I held him by the jowls, and then he spoke for the first time, and what he said was this: 'Say, Seventy-one, I done my duty, didn't I?'
"I told him that he did.