The average man is, I am sure, quite ignorant of the effect which extreme exhaustion has on the brain.  As the weary hours drag by, it seems as if a deadness, a sort of paralysis, creeps up the limbs, upwards towards the head.  The bones of the feet ache with a very positive pain.  It needs a concentration of mind that a stupefied brain can ill afford to give to force the knees to keep from doubling under the weight of the body.  The hands feel as if they were swelling until the boiling blood would ooze from the finger-tips.  The lungs seem too exhausted to expand; the neck too weary to support the heavy head.  The shoulders ache under the galling weight of sword and haversack, and every inch of clammy skin on the body seems ten times as sensitive as it normally is.  The nerves in the face and hands feel like swelled veins that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails.  The tongue and eyes seem to expand to twice their usual size.  Sound itself loses its sharp conciseness, and reaches the brain only as a blurred and indistinct impression.

But perhaps the reader may say that he has once done twenty-five or thirty miles in a day, and did not feel half as bad as that.  He must remember, however, that these men had been doing over twenty-five miles every day for the last ten days, and that, in addition to the physical fatigue, they had suffered the mental fatigue caused by fighting.  Their few hours of halting were generally occupied by trench digging.  They were not having a fifth of the sleep that such a life requires.  They were protected neither from the heat of noon nor from the chill of dawn.  The food they got was not fresh food, and their equipment weighed ninety pounds!  Lesser men would have died; men imbued with a feebler determination would have fainted.  As it was, the transport was crowded with men whose feet had failed them, and many must have fallen behind, to be killed or made prisoner.  The majority “stuck it” manfully, and faced every fresh effort with a cool, gruff determination that was wonderful.  This spirit saved the Allies from the first frenzied blow of Germany, in just the same way that it had saved England from the Armada and from Napoleon.

The Subaltern realised the value of his men; indeed, he felt a wholesome trust and faith in them that individual outbursts of bad temper or lack of discipline could not shake.  They occupied, more than they had ever done before, the greater part of his thoughts and attention.  He made their safety and comfort his first care, and protected them from ridiculous orders and unnecessary fatigue.  He found himself watching and playing upon their moods.  He tried very hard and earnestly to make them a good officer.  He thought that they were the salt of the earth, that there never had been men like them, nor would be again.

No sooner had a scanty meal been rammed down their throats than they were paraded once more, and hurried away to the crest of another ridge.  One of the Aisne bridges had been left standing, and apparently the enemy was across it, and already threatening to envelop their position.  Having reached higher ground they stopped for what was left of the night, since it was impossible for the enemy cavalry to attack them in that country.