Sometimes the chauffeurs who were waiting for their clients got a chance
to talk to one of the soldiers. Eager for news, they clustered round the
wounded man, bombarding him with questions.

"Are the Boches retreating?"

"When did it begin?"

"Just where is the attack located?"

"Are things going well for us?"

The soldier, a big young fellow with a tanned face, somewhat pale from
the shock of a ripped-up forearm, answered the questions good-naturedly,
though the struggle had been on so great a scale that he could only tell
about his own hundred feet of trench. Indeed the substance of his
information was that there had been a terrible bombardment of the German
lines, and then an attack by the French which was still in progress.

"Are we going to break clear through the lines?"

The soldier shrugged his shoulders. "They hope to," he replied.

Just beyond us, in one of the thousand stretchers on the floor, a small
bearded man had died. With his left leg and groin swathed in bandages,
he lay flat on his back, his mouth open, muddy, dirty, and dead. From
time to time the living on each side stole curious, timid glances at
him. Then, suddenly, some one noticed the body, and two
stretcher-bearers carried it away, and two more brought a living man