THE HUN.
46
The Ypres Times.
"Courage, moral or physicalis peculiar to no race, creed or colour."
Clasped in the hand of a young soldier, cold and dead, picked up near Passchendaele,
were the leaves of a letter from his mother, on the backs of which was scrawled a tale
that should be shouted round the world. The body was covered with a German overcoat,
and on the ground beside it were an empty cognac flask and a burnt-out cigarette. Several
hundred yards away lay the corpse of a German machine gunner, still crouched on all fours,
partly buried in a shell hole and the link that bound themin life and in death
fluttered in the dead boy's grasp.
So ran this hurried scrawl
Here I lie, encircled by the gun duel, on the slopes below Passchendaele, painfully
writing this, and hoping that someone will find it.
I know that I cannotTive long. I am cold as death, hit somewhere in the back»
and my jaw is smashed. Christ! that such things shoidd be. I strive to keep my thoughts
clear bitterly remembering that I used to wonder, at the office, back in England, how a
soldier felt lying out on the battlefieldI know now.
I cannot smoke, though somewhere in my pockets are some cigarettes that came
with this letter from home. As I turn my head to stay the cursed torture, something
is moving over towards me. It gets closer, and I recognise the German uniform.
Furtively I stuff the papers in my coat and wonder what fresh agony this means I am too
dazed really to care now. I don't know how long it is since I first saw Fritzy, but he
has gone, grimly crawling on, leaving behind his bloody track like a human snail. He
tried to get me on his back, but I couldn't move, and he collapsed for some time.
Now, alone again, and my misery stifled with the drug he has given me, I can tell what
happened when he first came upfor help he will never bring back to me.
As I stuffed my papers away, he came crawling slowly up, hatless, and I saw that he
had one leg crushed, and dragging behind him, and a great wound in his neck, the blood
from which had sopped out under the rough bandage, and made his shoulder all soaking
red. He stopped, gasping weakly, opposite methe wreck of a powerful man in the
prime of life, with a bold resolute face, ghastly with suffering.
"My movement attracted his notice, and he said in English,Why lie there Come on,
then-can't you mové I shook my head and then he gazed slowly at me
understanding he lay over on his side and pulled out a flask, from which he spilled
his brandy down my throat, and ripping out my tunic bandage, bound up my jaw while
his tears fell upon my face. After a horrible struggle, on the ground, he wriggled
from bis large coat, and drew it gently round me. He said he was a traveller in chemi
cals before the War, and had a younger brother studying at Munich. Having weakened
much through all this, he lit a cigarette, and lay smoking, silently watching me.
Suddenly he drew a little book from his breast, and, in a low voice, read over to me a
solemn prayer then, holding one of my hands towards the sky, he cursed war and the
makers of war. There flashed back through my mind many pleasant times which seemed
so long agoGod help us bothtrapped by this devilish horror. Ohthat the last
human acts should have come from that chap, whose desperate face, distorted with agony,
showed his own deadly need, and who grew feebler himself every minute.
He turned again to me, saying I will not die here like a wild beaststay a little»
I'll go for help and with that started away in the manner I first saw him come upon
me. He twisted his head over his shoulder to look round once more, and tried to smile
and I heard his call of courage come faintly back. Away over Wipers the last red