“The Commanding Officer was satisfied with the position. Emerging cautiously from its shelter, the party moved back to the original Battalion Headquarters. As they passed the trenches and the scooped-out holes in which the supports sheltered, inquiries were made as to casualties, and brave words spoken to cheer the exhausted men. The Intelligence Officer, ruminating on death, saw many signs of it. The true value of the body in which for a short period resides the soul of man was brought home to him. Three men crouched in a trench. Two were cooking; some conversation was in progress. The third man sat by their side and took no part. He seemed by his attitude to be thinking deeply, immersed in the solution of a problem. His face was turned away. The attitude was one of puzzled thought. “The Intelligence Officer made inquiries as to how they had fared. Two of the men looked up; they gave him a friendly smile and told him all they knew. The other sat with his head bent, still studying that inscrutable problem. The Intelligence Officer noticed with a start the colour of his ears, how wax-like in appearance; then he knew in a flash――the man was dead. His comrades did not even explain the fact. They seemed to realise that the figure by their side no longer counted, that the soul and personality were fled, that there was nothing dreadful in the husk that sat there and still seemed one of them. War had taught them what a small thing the body really is, what a matter of indifference whether it is smashed or not. They had learned one thing at least――the proportionate value of the body and the soul. “That night the 4th Battalion handed over its burden to some one else. It was due to be relieved. The Chaplain had arrived to see to it that the brave dead had decent burial. When it was possible, the Grenadiers always carried down their dead, so that in the future, grouped together, they would stand as a memorial of the cause they fought for, and indicate plainly to future generations how Grenadiers could fight and die――a monument to the power of discipline, self-sacrifice, and pride of race.”