That we who had been first of the Indian contingent to board a ship, first to land in France, first to engage the enemy, should now be first to surrender in a body seemed to us very much worse than death.

Yet Ranjoor Singh bade us leave our rifles and climb out of the trench, and we obeyed him.
God knows why we obeyed him.

I, who had been half-hearted hitherto, hated him in that minute as a trapped wolf hates the hunter; yet I, too, obeyed.
We left our dead for the Germans to bury, but we dragged the wounded out and some of them died as we lifted them.

When we reached the German trench and they counted us, including Ranjoor Singh and three-and-forty wounded there were two-hundred-and-three-and-fifty of us left alive.
They led Ranjoor Singh apart.

He had neither rifle nor saber in his hand, and he walked to their trench alone because we avoided him.