"The Upturned Face." Stephen Crane.

One-minute review: Two officers bury a comrade, while bullets spit over and around them. The irony of the commonplace “plop” as the dead man’s body and face are finally covered with dirt in the awful, momentous, tremendous experience of death.

75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.