There is no drearier post on earth.
One day in the pile of masonry thirty feet from our cellar refuge the
sailors began throwing out the bricks, and in a few minutes they
uncovered the body of a comrade. All the village has the smell of
desolation. That smell is compounded of green ditch-water, damp plaster,
wet clothing, blood, straw, and antiseptics. The nose took it as we
crossed the canal, and held it till we shook ourselves on the run home.
Thirty minutes a day in that soggy wreck pulled at my spirits for hours
afterward. But those chaps stood up to it for twenty-four hours a day,
lifting a cheery face from a stinking cellar, hopping about in the
tangle, sleeping quietly when their "night off" comes. As our chauffeur
drew his camera, one of them sprang into a bush entanglement, aimed his
rifle, and posed.
I recollect an afternoon when we had word of an attack. We were grave,
because the Germans are strong and fearless.
"Are they coming?" grinned a sailor. "Let them come. We are ready."
We learned to know many of the Fusiliers Marins and to grow fond of
them. How else could it be when we went and got them, sick and wounded,
dying and dead, two, six, ten of them a day, for many weeks, and brought
them in to the Red Cross post for a dressing, and then on to the
hospital? I remember a young man in our ambulance. His right foot was
shot away, and the leg above was wounded.
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