The men,
sitting around the streets of Bailleul in the sun, looked as if they
had seen and experienced more than they could ever tell.
One of my officer comrades had gone insane, and another had been so
shell shocked that he was of no further use and had been sent to
England,--the latter was one of those officers whom I had seen in the
little club house at Winnezeele. Two of my friends had been buried out
in the front one night with two other officers--all in the one shell
hole.
The medical officer, Captain Haywood, conducted the burial without
candle or book. The green white light from the German flares and the
red flashes of the guns was the only light to show the sad little
party where their erstwhile comrades rested. The lay parson, exhausted
with seventy hours' continuous work, and unable to recall a single
word of the burial service, broke huskily into this rugged
commendation, "Well, boys, they were four damn good fellows; let us
repeat the Lord's prayer," but they couldn't manage to say even the
Lord's prayer among them.
What a setting for a soldier funeral! The black night, the roar and
flash of the guns and the green flare of the German star shells
silhouetting those bowed heads above the soldiers' grave. What a
fitting tribute to a soldier! The broken voice with the rough and
ready words of praise: "They were four damn good fellows.
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