“You go back—back—back—to Mary for—” The words trembled and stopped short.
“For you, O. D.?” supplied Jimmy.
“Oui,” gasped the dying boy.
“But you’ll go, too, O. D. Hell, you can’t die now.”
“Yes—die—later—see you—somewhere— Good-by, Jim—” Death cut the words short.
A great lump rose in Jimmy McGee’s throat. Something warm and salty burned his eyes. He pressed his good hand against the torn back of his pal and tried to staunch the incessant red flow with his fingers. Captain Henderson removed him tenderly from the body of his pal a few moments later and led Jimmy, dry-eyed and white-faced, over to the dressing-station.
“Just the way of it, cap. The best guys gets it. Poor O. D.!” muttered Jimmy as they bound up his splintered arm.
They buried O. D. in a shell-hole and wrapped his body in the blankets and shelter-halves that he and Jimmy had slept between. Jimmy looked at the sad mound of earth and then let them take him away to the ambulance that was to bring him and two others down to the échelon infirmary. His wound was not deemed serious enough for hospital treatment.
CHAPTER XVII—“FINEE! LA GUERRE FINEE!”
In the somber shadow of gaunt, historic Verdun the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 crawled slowly toward its epoch-making eleventh hour. The progress of each advancing minute was accompanied by a bombardment that started in a rumbling basso-profundo of fourteen-inch naval guns and reached its crescendo of barbaric medley in a crackling cataract of machine-gun fire.