..." And that when it means
lying on the ground under the bombardment, thirsty, feverish, feeling
his strength ebb with his blood. Before any one comes back to get him,
often he will try again, if he has a sound arm left, to fire his rifle
or his machine-gun once more. Glory surrounds the epic incident of the
trench where the only unwounded soldier, seeing the enemy arrive, cried
out as if in delirium: "Arise, ye dead!" and the dying really rose, and
succeeded, some of them, in firing once more before they fell again, and
the assailants fled. A more recent and simpler deed is also worth
recording.
[Sidenote: A dead observer protects his pilot.]
Returning from a bombardment of the enemy's factories in broad daylight,
a French machine conducted by two men was attacked by several aviators.
The observer, hit by a ball in the chest, dropped down into the
_carlingue_. The pilot seeing this prepared to turn back. But hearing
his machine-gun firing again, he concluded that the observer was not
seriously hurt. As soon as he landed in France: "Well, what about that
wound?" he asked. No answer. He bent down and saw that his companion was
dead. Even in his agony he had continued to protect his comrade.
In the beginning of the War the wounded stayed a long, a very long time
without being rescued, at the place where they fell, or in the shelter
to which they had been able to crawl. Our stretcher-bearers of the
American Ambulance found, after the battle of the Marne, many who had
lain for days and nights in shell holes, at the foot of trees, in
ruined barns or churches! One may guess what the mortality might be!
Today, happily, it is no longer so.
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