"We were all lying on the grass, and having a hot time. Crack,
crack! Whizz, whizz! When I saw them downed, I got up, though they
yelled at me, 'Get down!' Couldn't leave 'em like that. Nothing to
make a song about, seeing I couldn't do anything else,"

Nearly all the boys of the squad have some high deed of arms to
their credit, and the Croix de Guerre has been successively set upon
their breasts.

"I haven't saved any Frenchmen," says Biquet, "but I've given some
Boches the bitter pill." In the May attacks, he ran off in advance
and was seen to disappear in the distance, but came back with four
fine fellows in helmets.

"I, too," says Tulacque, "I've killed some." Two months ago, with
quaint vanity, he laid out nine in a straight row, in front of the
taken trench. "But," he adds, "it's always the Boche officer that
I'm after."

"Ah, the beasts!" The curse comes from several men at once and from
the bottom of their hearts.

"Ah, mon vieux," says Tirloir, "we talk about the dirty Boche race;
but as for the common soldier, I don't know if it's true or whether
we're codded about that as well, and if at bottom they're not men
pretty much like us."

"Probably they're men like us," says Eudore.