It seemed as if none could escape! Yet, strange to say—for this is a true story—of all that group, no one was hurt, except the brave Hetais, whose head had been all but blown away by the bursting of the bomb.
It is impossible to describe the grief and consternation of his comrades, who felt, one and all, that each could have been better spared than the man who lay dead at their feet.
Just then the officer in charge of the party came up, and the senior man told him how Hetais had met his death. The officer was no less sorry than the men, for Hetais was popular with all ranks.
'Poor fellow! he was a brave man if there ever was one,' said the officer. 'Carry his body back to camp, my lads; he shall be honoured in death, if he has just missed it in life,' for the officer was thinking of the medal and the ceremony of presentation which was to have taken place that evening.
The men extemporised a sort of bier out of a litter on which the dead man was lying and their muskets, and thus they reverently carried him back to camp, the relief party presenting arms as the funeral procession passed by them.
When the General in command was informed of the death of Hetais, he issued the following order to the troops:
'I was to have presented Hetais, of the Ville de Paris, with the médaille militaire, and his untimely death must not deprive him of this honour. I shall fasten the medal on him at his burial.'
A few hours later, all the sailors and soldiers who could be spared from the trenches were drawn up in a hollow square outside the camp around the body of Hetais, who, wrapped in his cloak, slept his last calm sleep on the rough litter in which he had been carried from the trenches.
The deep silence was at last broken by the loud voice of the commanding officer: 'Present arms!' Then he took off his helmet, and followed by another officer, who carried the medal, he advanced towards the bier, and read out the brief account of the gallant action which had gained Hetais his medal.
Then, taking the medal from the hand of the subaltern, he fastened it on to the cloak of the sailor, and, turning to the assembled soldiers and sailors, he thus addressed them: