"I wants the regiment to be proud of me--and then they calls me the Company Idiot." He couldn't do the little things--he was always forgetting, but...! What was that about "lifting 'em through the charge that won the day"? There was no charge, but there was the regiment. And the regiment was wanting him at last. Something wet touched his fingers, and when he looked at them, they were red. "B-A-R-M-Y. You ought to 'ave a nurse...." Then once again coherent thought failed him--utter physical weakness gripped him--he lay comatose, shuddering, and crying softly over he knew not what. The sweat was pouring down his face from the heat of the gas helmet, but still he held the valve between his teeth, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth as he had been told. It was automatic, involuntary; he couldn't think, he only remembered certain things by instinct. Suddenly a high explosive shell burst near him--quite close: and a mass of earth crashed down on his legs and back, half burying him. He whimpered feebly, and after a while dragged himself free. But the action brought him close to that silent figure, with the ripped up back.... "You ought to 'ave a nurse..." Why? Gawd above--why? Wasn't he as good a man as that there dead corporal? Wasn't he one of the regiment too? And now the Corporal couldn't do anything, but he--well, he hadn't got no hole torn out of his back. It wasn't his blood that lay stagnant, filling the little holes at the bottom of the trench.... Kipling came back to him--feebly, from another world. The dreamer was dreaming once again. "If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white, Remember it's ruin to run from a fight." Run! Who was talking of running? He was going to save the regiment--once he could think clearly again. Everything was hazy just for the moment. "And wait for supports like a soldier." But there weren't no supports, and the telephone wire was broken--the wire he'd tripped over as he came up. Until it was mended there wouldn't be any supports--until it was mended--until----