Always we asked whether they knew of any wounded.

We found a wounded soldier groaning under the hedge.

One leg was soaked in blood and he gave little shrill desperate cries as we lifted him on to the stretcher.

Another soldier, lying on the road in the moonlight, murmured incessantly: "_Boje moi! Boje moi! Boje moi!_" But they were all ghosts.

We alone, in that familiar and yet so unreal world, were alive.