But the line for the moment was blocked. That shell-burst had left few alive in the section of trench, but the two or three it had not killed outright had been dragged clear, and down the trench a little way. Now the men who had taken them out had stopped and laid them down and were shouting vainly--and rather wildly--for stretcher-bearers, and endeavoring--some of the more cool-headed amongst them--to fumble out first field-dressings and apply them to the worst of the many wounds. They halted there, busy, and heedless for the moment of anything else, for a full ten minutes, while the trench behind them filled with men pressing on, shouting angrily, and unknowing the cause of the block, to “Move on there!” to “Get out of the way!” The end of the line next to the wounded men was forced to try and push forward; the trench was narrow, barely wide enough at its floor-level to accommodate the figures stretched out in it and the men who stooped or knelt over them fumbling at them, rolling and tying the field-dressing bandages upon them; but the men made shift somehow to pass them, striding and straddling over their huddled bodies, squeezing past the men who tried to dress the wounds. These still struggled to complete their task, quite absorbed in it, straightening themselves and flattening their bodies against the trench wall to allow a man to scrape past, stooping again about their work. “Who has got a spare field-dressing?” or “Give us your field-dressing,” was all they took time to say to the men of the passing line, until a wrathful voice above suddenly interrupted them. One of the officers, fretting at the delay and the slow progress down the trench, had climbed out and run, risking the shells and bullets along the level, to find the cause of the check. He shouted angrily at the men below him: “Wounded? What’s that got to do with it? That’s no reason you should block the whole company going forward. Where do you think you’re in--a communication trench or a field-dressing-station or a base hospital? Pick those men up--two of you to each man--and carry them along until you can find a place to lay them where you won’t choke the whole trench; or carry them right on out of the communication trench.” The wounded men were picked up somehow or anyhow by knees and shoulders, and carried and shuffled and bumped along the winding trench, until they emerged into the old British front-line firing trench.