"We've heard that before," said Tom Randolph. "Division hasn't started out yet, ole boy; an' we're the last of the division." "God, I'll be glad to go.... I'm dead," said Russell. "I was up all last night with dysentery." "So was I.... It was not funny; first it'd be vomiting, and then diarrhoea, and then the shells'd start coming in. Gave me a merry time of it." "They say it's the gas," said Martin. "God, the gas! Turns me sick to think of it," said Russell, stroking his forehead with his hand. "Did I tell you about what happened to me the night after the attack, up in the woods?" "No." "Well, I was bringing a load of wounded down from P.J. Right and I'd got just beyond the corner where the little muddy hill is--you know, where they're always shelling--when I found the road blocked. It was so God-damned black you couldn't see your hand in front of you. A camion'd gone off the road and another had run into it, and everything was littered with boxes of shells spilt about." "Must have been real nice," said Randolph. "The devilish part of it was that I was all alone. Coney was too sick with diarrhoea to be any use, so I left him up at the post, running out at both ends like he'd die. Well ... I yelled and shouted like hell in my bad French and blew my whistle and sweated, and the damned wounded inside moaned and groaned. And the shells were coming in so thick I thought my number'd turn up any time. An' I couldn't get anybody. So I just climbed up in the second camion and backed it off into the bushes.... God, I bet it'll take a wrecking crew to get it out...." "That was one good job. "But there I was with another square in the road and no chance to pass that I could see in that darkness. Then what I was going to tell you about happened. I saw a little bit of light in a ditch beside a big car that seemed to be laying on its side, and I went down to it and there was a bunch of camion drivers, sitting round a lantern drinking. "'Hello, have a drink!' they called out to me, and one of them got up, waving his arms, ravin' drunk, and threw his arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. His hair and beard were full of wet mud.... Then he dragged me into the crowd. "'Ha, here's a copain come to die with us,' he cried. "I gave him a shove and he fell down. But another one got up and handed me a tin cup full of that God-damned gniolle, that I drank not to make 'em sore. Then they all shouted, and stood about me, sayin', 'American's goin' to die with us. He's goin' to drink with us. He's goin' to die with us.' And the shells comin' in all the while. God, I was scared. "'I want to get a camion moved to the side of the road.... Good-bye,' I said. There didn't seem any use talkin' to them. "'But you've come to stay with us,' they said, and made me drink some more booze. 'You've come to die with us. Remember you said so.'