As he mentioned the name of the accursed Butte, I could not repress a
movement. He saw it and said:

"Sir, I am glad to go there."

And he told me his name and the number of his company. Then he hurried
away.

It chanced that precisely one week later I met one of his officers. I
asked him about the merry fellow.

"That man? He was killed the day before yesterday at Eparges."

And my comrade added in a low voice:

"He was shot down at my side, struck with a bullet square in the
chest. The death agony set in at once. As I was trying to do something
for him, passing my hand gently across his forehead, I said to him:

"Courage, my boy, courage."

He murmured the reply:

"Oh, I'm glad to die."

Glad ... the same phrase, the same words I had heard a week ago, which
can be heard everywhere on the French front--and they are glad to go
into all the trenches and into all the charnel houses, and it is with
a happy heart that they rest in peace.