Part of it was on crutches and part of it was in the graveyard and the rest of it was in the field.
Daily in these towns back behind the firing lines a certain percentage of the invalided and the injured, who had been brought thus far before their condition became actually serious, would die; and twice daily, or oftener, the dead would be buried with military honors.
So naturally we were eyewitnesses to a great many of these funerals.
Somehow they impressed me more than the sight of dead men being hurriedly shoveled under ground on the battle front where they had fallen.

Perhaps it was the consciousness that those who had these formal, separate burials were men who came alive out of the fighting, and who, even after being stricken, had a chance for life and then lost it.

Perhaps it was the small show of ceremony and ritual which marked each one--the firing squad, the clergyman in his robes, the tramping escort--that left so enduring an impress upon my mind.

I did not try to analyze the reasons; but I know my companions felt as I did.
I remember quite distinctly the very first of these funerals that I witnessed.

Possibly I remember it with such distinctness because it was the firSt.On our way to the advance positions of the Germans we had come as far as Chimay, which is an old Belgian town just over the frontier from France.