‘Saw whom, Murphy?’
‘Yon man,’ waving toward the empty bed. ‘Don’t ye mind what he told ye about conspicuous gallantry?’
‘Oh to be sure. You mean poor Donohue? But didn’t the doctor say he was delirious?’
‘God’s truth,’ again said Murphy. ‘Do’-no-who was no man for lying. I’ll tell ye all I saw, Sister.’
‘Don’t you think you had better try and sleep now? We can talk better in the morning.’
‘Deed no, it’s little sleep I’ll get till me mind’s relaised,’ and poor Murphy looked so distressed and worried the Sister saw it was best to let him have his way. This is what he told her.
‘Do ye mind the day we was brought in? It was that fore-neune we’d had the biggest gaz battle that iver ye saw. Sure, we’d shtarted attackin’ finely. We Irish boys was with the Highlanders. We’d quit our trenches and was for dashing right across to the Boches, when all in a minute we seemed to come intil a gaz cloud. It set us shtrugglin’ and imprecatin’ and shplutterin’. Do’-no-who was beside me. We would have suffocated entoirely, so we got to runnin’. Do’-no-who, strong boy that he was, was prancin’ along past me, chokin’ and trying to git his mask fix’d on him, when he stopped all of a sudden. He might have been par’rlised.
‘“Come along,” ses I, what with the gaz.
‘“Divil a bit,” ses he. “I’ve just moinded the machane-gun. We’ve left it for the Boches.”
‘“How could we help ’t?” ses I. “Think o’ yiself and quit troublin’ about machane-guns.”