Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/186

 side, while they peacefully went to sleep on the other. There’s no doubt getting a dead German up those shafts is weary work, and they were tired. But I’d sooner have slept in the trench myself. However, that is by the way. And so we go on, wandering in perfect safety over the ground that a few days before meant certain death. A mass of rifles, kit, bandoliers, accoutrements litters the ground, save where it has already been collected and sorted into heaps. Unexploded bombs lie everywhere, clips of ammunition, bayonets. All has to be collected and sent back—another phase of clearing the battlefield.

Then there is the road where some transport was caught topping the rise. There the holes have to be bigger, for the horses have to be buried even as the men. It is only rarely the process is already done. One horse there was, in a trench on his back, fifty yards from the road, stone dead. How he got there, Heaven knows. He wasn’t much trouble.

Then there was another mound from which protruded an arm, in German uniform, with its fingers pointing. And the hand was black.