The French captain turned away and I could see that he pitied those comrades of his as we went over cratered earth to the village of Neuville St. -Vaast.

“Poor fellows,” he said, presently. “Not even a cup of hot coffee!⁠ ⁠… That is war! Blood and misery. Glory, yes⁠—afterward! But at what a price!”

So we came to Neuville St. -Vaast, a large village once with a fine church, old in history, a schoolhouse, a town hall, many little streets of comfortable houses under the shelter of the friendly old hill of Vimy, and within easy walk of Arras; then a frightful rubbish heap mingled with unexploded shells, the twisted iron of babies’ perambulators, bits of dead bodies, and shattered farm-carts.

Two French soldiers carried a stretcher on which a heavy burden lay under a blood-soaked blanket.

“It is a bad wound?” asked the captain.