“The battlin’ was wearin’ down to a small noise. Most of the Boches had all they could stand. They began tryin’ to get back to their lines, and our batteries cut ’em up like a lawn-mower gets the grass. Their artillery had shut up except those few guns that was firin’ at ambulances and wounded parties. You see, our ambulances had to come up over a road that was pickin’ and when they started ’round Dead Man’s Curve—Bluey! Bang!—the Boches would smash ’em, wounded and all, into pieces. We had to keep our wounded down in that dugout about six hours waitin’ to evacuate ’em on that account. The little Greek boy I was tellin’ you about died before they got him away. “Exceptin’ for a few guns goin’, now and then, the place was quiet ’round five-thirty. So quiet you could hear the wounded moanin’ mighty easy, and now and then a thud was heard when barbed wire supportin’ a dead man would snap and let the body hit the ground. “The early mornin’ was as gray as cigarette ashes, but it was plenty light enough to see what was ’round us. I wished it had been a blame sight darker. I couldn’t look at poor old Frank Gordon to save my life. He was lyin’ right outside the trench—face turned toward the dug-out, mouth wide open and all blue and bloated like. The only arm he had was pointin’ to the sky just like an arrow. He was almost straddlin’ Wilson’s trunk. “But Gordon and Wilson was just two of many. There was _beaucoup_ more of our boys and officers lyin’ ’round in stiff heaps, all broken and twisted up. Down ’round the first-line infantry trenches it was as grim lookin’ as an opened-up graveyard. There was _beaucoup_ Germans piled up on the ground and hangin’ on wire entanglements. All mostly dead—some just dyin’. I saw a few Americans scattered in and out between ’em, too. “Father Farrell came along and asked some of us to give him a hand to put the boys away. I was one of the gang that started the buryin’ stuff, but when I came to Frank Gordon— Honest to God, O. D., I couldn’t touch him. Sounds foolish to say that—don’t it? I swear it’s a fact. Guess I didn’t have the guts. “I says, ‘Father, you’ll have to get somebody else on this detail in my place. I can’t touch Gordon.’ I used to sleep with that boy and listen to him tell me ’bout his girl, a colleen that was waitin’ for him to come back to the old country—Gordon was born in Ireland, you see. Father Farrell understood, I guess, ’cause he says, ‘Here, you take his identification tag, this ring and pocketbook, and keep it; they’re his effects. Then you beat it to the dug-out.’ I grabbed them things and run like hell. I was kinda feelin’ funny in the gills. First and last time it’s hit me that way, though. “We got relieved that night and were sent back to the _échelon_ for a rest and somethin’ to eat. We’d been _monjayin’_ the old iron rations for almost a week straight.