I had merely commenced to feel the sting of the pain when the Huns rushed us again and it was hand to hand. A Bavarian lunged toward me with rifle clubbed; I closed my eyes, as I was utterly helpless and waited for my skull to be smashed. The blow did not fall. I opened my eyes just in time to see our sergeant-major plunge his bayonet through the Bavarian's neck. Down flopped the Hun on all fours, with his hands one on each side convulsively clutching the bayonet, and he sat immediately opposite me, just a bare few yards intervening, during all the hours I was there, with a hellish grin on his face. When the pain of the wound would subside and I would doze away for a few minutes I would awaken with a shudder, as I thought the dead Hun was moving his face closer and closer toward mine. At this time I had an undying instance of the devotion of my chum, Morgan. He also was wounded, not so badly as I was, but time and again, at a terrible risk to himself, he would crawl over and help me regain a more comfortable position, all the time suffering intensely from his own wound, which was very painful. Nothing could be done for any of the wounded, so serious was the position of the remnant of the boys. Their business was to hold what they had won and the wounded must do the best they could. The remnant, however, were of the Fifth and they held until relieved and reinforcements arrived twenty-four hours later. CHAPTER XXXI THE AFTERMATH Once during that weary day, the Germans put over such a terrific barrage of shrapnel, that I, for one, thought it impossible for any of our wounded to survive. Such is the mercy of the Hun. Hour after hour passed, casualties mounted steadily up, but those laddies held. As time went on, the pain in my wounded leg became excruciating, and, forgetting the etiquette of the Western Front that a man must not squeal too much when he is hit, I groaned aloud. I shall be ashamed to meet many of my comrades in later days, for they remember my whimpering. Night came, darkness being heralded by a storm of strafeing on both sides. The bullets thudded about the top of the water hole, while the noise of the strife drowned my yells, as the gangrene slowly ate its way up my limb. Hour after hour I lay, till at last that grand sergeant-major of ours came along and gave me a nip of rum. Oh, you psalm-singers, who raise your holy hands in horror at the thought of the perdition the boys are bound for, if they should happen to take a nip of rum to keep a little warmth in their poor battered bodies, I wish you could all lie shivering in a hole full of icy liquid mud, with every nerve in your body quivering with pain, with the harrowing moans of the wounded forever ringing in your ears, with hell's own din raging all around. Any one of you would need a barrel of it to keep his miserable life in his body. Here and now let me say, the man who refuses the rum issue is considered a fool.