Smoke still lay along the top of the ridge. It smelled of burnt propellant and turned mud, and near the British trenches, of blood.
A single shot cracked on the eastern end of the crest. A shout. Then nothing. A section was clearing the last of the dugouts.
James's skeleton was still at the northern edge, facing the road. It was missing two fingers now.
Down by the stone wall, the young soldier from the morning was still going along the stretchers. He'd done them all twice. He was standing now, just looking down the slope at the lane where the ambulances were loading.
Two men came down past James from the trenches with a stretcher. The blanket was over the face. One of the boots sticking out from under it had a name written on the heel in marker. *KEOGH.*
The young soldier saw it from the wall.
He didn't run to it. He walked over and walked beside it all the way down to the lane, with one hand on the edge of the stretcher, and nobody told him to go back to his section.
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