or failure of the defence depends mainly on the speed and accuracy with which the defenders “get their rounds off.”  The Officers pace about, making sure of “keeping touch” with the units on their flank, discovering the best way to retire, and so on.  There is at such moments an odd desire to give way to the temptation of saying to oneself, “Where shall I be in an hour’s time?” One gazes with a subtle feeling of affection on one’s limbs, and wonders, “Where shall I get it?” Subconsciously one is amused and a little ashamed of such concessions to sentimentality.  The best thing to do under the circumstances is to go and check the range-finders’ figures, or prepare the headlines of a message or two.

* * * * *

A Taube, like some huge insect with a buzz of whirring wings, flew overhead, dropping multi-coloured stars from its tail.  Then our guns “opened the ball.”

There was something blatant and repulsive about that first burst of sound.  The ferns of the forest shivered, as if awakened from a sunny dream to face terrible calamities.  The trees seemed to shake with a delicate fear of what was in store for them.  The enemy’s fire burst upon them with a startling intensity.

There was no point in holding the advanced edge of the wood under such a bombardment until the actual appearance of the enemy infantry made it necessary, so the whole line was retired some fifty yards into the wood.  By this manoeuvre the Colonel lost no advantage, and must have saved many lives.

Although artillery fire had been a pretty frequent occurrence, this was the heaviest the men had yet experienced.  The noise was ear-splitting; the explosions filled the quivering air; the ground seemed to shudder beneath them.  Branches fell crashing to the ground; it seemed as if a god was flogging the tree-tops with a huge scourge.  The din was awful, petrifying, numbing.

And in the middle of all this inferno, with the sight of men with ashen faces limping, crawling, or being dragged to the rear, with the leaves on the ground smoking from the hot, jagged shell-casings buried among them, the Subaltern suddenly discovered that he was not afraid.  The discovery struck him as curious.  He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel “queer.”  He said to himself, “Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don’t expect you’ll ever get out of.  You ought to be in an awful state.  Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks.  Your tongue ought to cleave to the roof of your mouth; and it isn’t.  You ought to feel pains in the pit of your stomach, and you’re not.  Devil a bit!  You know, you’re missing all the sensations that the writers told you about.  You’re not playing the game.  Come, buck up, fall down and grovel on the ground!” But he did not.  He did not want to.  He felt absolutely normal.