"They went along under a
lot of shrapnel and had many casualties."
He told the story of that night in a quiet, thoughtful way, with
phrases of almost biblical beauty in their simple truth, and the soul
of the man, the spirit of the whole army in which he was a private
soldier, was revealed when he flashed out a sentence with his one note
of fire, "But the enemy lost more than we did, sir, that night!"
We wandered away again into the darkness, with the din of the
bombardment all about us. There was not a square yard of ground
unplowed by shells and we did not nourish any false illusions as to
finding a safe spot for a bivouac.
There was no spot within the ramparts of Ypres where a man might say
"No shells will fall here." But one place we found where there seemed
some reasonable odds of safety. There also, if sleep assailed us, we
might curl up in an abandoned dugout and hope that it would not be
"crumped" before the dawn. There were several of these shelters there,
but, peering into them by the light of a match, I shuddered at the
idea of lying in one of them.
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