Corporal John Finnegan had been wounded in the leg the day before. He tied a bandage around the wound and stayed where he was. He was with Lieutenant Young when that leader was killed and ran to avenge him. A shell burst near him and he was hurled in the air, falling senseless and deaf. I saw him in the First Aid Station, a little way back, where he had been carried. The lads there had ripped up his breeches to re-bandage his earlier wound. He was just coming to. They told me he was shell shocked. “Shell shocked, nothing,” I said. “A shell could kill John Finnegan, but it could not break his nerves.” Just then he got sight of me. “There’s nawthin’ the matther with me, Father, exceptin’ that I’m deef. They got the Lootenant and I haven’t squared it with thim yet. I’m goin’ back.” I told him he must stay where he was at least till I returned from the Battalion Dressing Station, which was 500 yards down the old Roman Road. Going out I saw Marquardt, Hess and Kleinberg carrying a litter. I offered to help and found it was Dallas Springer, a dear friend of mine since Border days, now badly wounded. We got him with difficulty down the shelled road to the Battalion Dressing Station where I found the Surgeons, Doctors Martin, Cooper and Landrigan working away oblivious of the shells falling around. Landrigan had been out most of the night of the big bombardment arranging for the evacuation of the wounded. I put Dallas down beside Michael Leonard, a Wisconsin lad named Pierre, and Harold Frear, a slim, plucky lad whom we had rejected at the Armory for underweight when he applied for enlistment just a year ago, but who had pestered us all till we let him by. I was told that Lester Snyder of our Sanitary Detachment had been brought in nearly dead, a martyr to his duty, having gone out to bandage the wounded under heavy fire. It was a consolation to me to recall the devout faces of all five of them as I gave them Communion a day or two before.