And shades recoil and recover,
And fade away as they fall
In the space between the trenches,
And the watchers see it all.
I lay down in the trench and was just dropping off to sleep when a
message came along the trench.
"Any volunteers to help to carry out wounded?" was the call.
Four of us volunteered and a guide conducted us along to the firing
line. He was a soldier of the 23rd London, the regiment which had made
the charge the night before; he limped a little, a dejected look (p. 201)
was in his face and his whole appearance betokened great weariness.
"How did you get on last night?" I asked him.
"My God! my God!" he muttered, and seemed to be gasping for breath. "I
suppose there are some of us left yet, but they'll be very few."
"Did you capture the trench?"
"They say we did," he answered, and it seemed as if he were speaking
of an incident in which he had taken no part. "But what does it
matter? There's few of us left."
We entered the main communication trench, one just like the others,
narrow and curving round buttresses at every two or three yards. The
floor was covered with blood, not an inch of it was free from the dark
reddish tint.
"My God, my God," said the 23rd man, and he seemed to be repeating the
phrase without knowing what he said. "The wounded have been going down
all night, all morning and they're only beginning to come."
A youth of nineteen or twenty sat in a niche in the trench, naked to
the waist save where a bandaged-arm rested in a long arm-sling.
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