"He was too daring," said a Corporal. "Yesterday, he came boldly in without stooping in the least. To-day I was here and, as I watched him coming in, I was just beginning to cry out: 'Sergeant, what are you doing?' when I saw him sink down. He fell there, against the side first, and then he rolled down." The man who spoke had the thin, stern-looking face peculiar to those who have suffered much during the war. "I have seen plenty wounded," he continued, "but never anyone like that whilst I was speaking to him. You cannot imagine the impression it makes." A man who was crouching down making the trench deeper, threw some earth over the parapet. Some bullets dashed against it. The face of the wounded man grew gradually more and more lifeless and his breathing became more difficult. In order to take him away, we were obliged to wait until the blue of the sky grew fainter and the darkness came on. To attempt anything else meant certain death. Everyone tried to say something, by way of helping to kill time. "He was not even on duty. He volunteered to give a hand in taking the post. 'I am better qualified than the others, Commandant,' he said, 'for risking my life. I am not married and I am not an only son. If I happen to disappear, I shall leave no one depending on me.'" Leaning against the parapet, we waited there. It began to get gradually colder and colder, and our heads and limbs were feeling more and more the fatigue of three days' consecutive bombardment. Our eyes were fixed all the time on the motionless features of the man whom we had known so gay and so full of life. In the distance a mine exploded, giving a sudden shock to the ground. A part of the trench had blown up, it was a piece of the "Death Trench" that had disappeared in the air. An aeroplane then came and shooting followed it. The cannon now made its voice heard. The time seems long when one is waiting and watching and, as the wounded man's face changed, our hearts grew fuller and fuller, and we suffered acutely as we watched this life passing slowly away. Under the slight moustache, the white teeth could now be seen, the uninjured eye had lost its expression and brilliancy, and only one of the slender, sun-burnt hands moved. The sky over our heads began to get paler and paler. The white clouds then turned grey and mauve. The hour was approaching for us to leave and, creeping along, we went to see how the land lay, in order to decide which way to go. The green ground was all pierced with shell holes newly made in the dark earth. Spikes were to be seen everywhere, ours made of wood, and the others of iron, protected by barbed wire. Rubbish of all kinds strewed the soil. On the other side of the winding Yser, the green and brown dyke looked like a cliff rising above the water, that wonderful dyke against which the barbarous wave of invaders had lashed in fury and then died away.