We were carrying a dead man among the living.
"Take him out and leave him," ordered our officer; "it is
bad for the wounded men riding next to him and under him."
We lifted him down from his swinging perch in the car. He
was heavy at the shoulders to shift. The dead seem heavier
than the quick. We stretched him at full length in the
sticky mud of the gutter at the side of the road. He lay
there, white face and wide eyes in the night, as if frozen
in his pain. Soldiers, stumbling to their supper, brushed
against his stiff body and then swerved when they saw the
thing which they had touched. A group of doctors and
officers moved away. Mud from the sloughing tires of the
transports spattered him, but not enough to cover him. No
one had time to give him his resting-place. We were too busy
with the fresher shambles, and their incompleted products,
to pause for a piece of work so finished as that cold
corpse.
But no indignity of the roadway can long withhold him from
his portion of peace, and the land that awakened his courage
will receive him at last. There is more companionship under
the ground than above it for one who has been gallant
against odds.