Benny and I were chums, but nobody knows what that word means till
you've kept warm under the same blanket and kneeled side by side
in the firing-line. It brings men together like nothing else in
the world, and it's queer the unlikely sorts that take to one
another. I was so common and uneddicated that I wonder what Benny
ever saw to like in me, for, as I said, he was a regular Mommer's
boy and splendidly brought up and an electrician. Religious, too,
and a church member! But he was powerful fond of me, and never
went into action but what he'd let off a little prayer to himself
that I might come out all right and go to heaven if bolo-ed. Pity
he hadn't taken as much trouble for himself, for one day while we
were lying in a trench, and firing for all we were worth, I
suddenly saw that look in his face that a soldier gets to know so
well.
"Benny, you're shot!" I yelled out, dropping my Krag and all
struck of a heap.
"Shot, nothing!" he answered, and then he keeled over in the dirt
and his legs began to kick.
He took a powerful long time to die, and there was even some talk
of sending him down to the base hospital, the field one being that
full and constantly needed at our heels. But he pleaded with the
doctors and was allowed as a favour to stay on and die where he
was minded--with the battery. I was with him all I could, and I'll
never forget how good that commissary sergeant was, a splendid
young man named Orr, who always had a little pot of chicken broth
for Benny and cornstarch, and what he fancied most of all--a sort
of thick dough cakes we called sinkers.
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