Then Wakeman poured out his story, a wonderful story, told in jerky sentences, garnished with blasphemies and obscene words. He had been a member of the Lewis Gun team. Very early in the advance the bursting of a high explosive shell had buried him, buried the whole gun team with its officer, buried the gun. Wakeman and three other men and the officer had crawled out from the mud and débris. Somehow they had unearthed the gun. Driven on by a kind of frenzy, they had advanced again, halting, firing a drum of cartridges, advancing again. Once more a shell caught them and buried them. Once more Wakeman crawled out, clawed his way out with hooked fingers, bit the loose clay with his mouth, bored through it with his head, dug at it with his toes. This time he and the officer were alone. They struggled to recover their gun, working fiercely, till a bullet hit the officer. After that Wakeman went on by himself, managed somehow to get among the men of the company to which his gun team belonged, and possessed himself of a rifle. At that point his story became incoherent. But about one thing he was clear. He and the others of his company had met in straight hand to hand fighting the proudest troops of Germany. By stabbing, lunging, battering with clubbed rifles, they had put the Prussian Guard to flight. “Well,” drawled the Canadian, “they did run. They certainly did run some. And what’s the matter with you, sonny? Hit?” “Buried,” said Wakeman, “buried twice, and shrapnel in my leg, little bits.” The bits were little, but there were a good many of them. Half an hour later Wakeman passed into the dressing station in his turn. The doctor looked him over, scribbled a word or two on the label which hung from the lad’s breast pocket, and patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll be all right, my boy,” he said. “No shell shock. No D.A.H. Get along with you. Feeling a bit hungry, eh?” “Thank you, sir,” said Wakeman. “Yes, sir, feel as if I could do with a bit of something to eat. The way of it was this, sir. We strafed them proper, we did. The Prussian Guards they was, and----” But the doctor had no time to listen to the story. “Get along now. Get along. The sooner the dressing is done, the sooner you’ll get your dinner.”