'Look at this,' he kept repeating, hugging it and then extending
it. 'Damned foolery! Damned foolery! My right hand, sir! My right hand!'
For some time Barnet could do nothing with him. The man was consumed by
his tortured realisation of the evil silliness of war, the realisation
which had come upon him in a flash with the bullet that had destroyed
his skill and use as an artificer for ever. He was looking at the
vestiges with a horror that made him impenetrable to any other idea. At
last the poor wretch let Barnet tie up his bleeding stump and help him
along the ditch that conducted him deviously out of range....
When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for water, and all
day long the line of pits suffered greatly from thirst. For food they
had chocolate and bread.
'At first,' he says, 'I was extraordinarily excited by my baptism of
fire. Then as the heat of the day came on I experienced an enormous
tedium and discomfort. The flies became extremely troublesome, and my
little grave of a rifle pit was invaded by ants. I could not get up
or move about, for some one in the trees had got a mark on me. I kept
thinking of the dead Prussian down among the corn, and of the bitter
outcries of my own man. Damned foolery! It WAS damned foolery.
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