A man sheltering behind the same tree suddenly spun round, and, grasping his left arm, fell with a thud to the ground.  He reeled over, with knees raised and rounded back, and staggered immediately to his feet.  “Oh, my arm, my arm!” he moaned plaintively, and turned away towards the rear, whimpering a little as he went, and tenderly holding the wet, dark-stained sleeve as he went.  The Subaltern felt that he ought to have winced with horror at the mutilation of the poor stricken thing, but beyond a slight sinking sensation between the lungs and the stomach, the incident left him with no emotion.  He picked up the man’s rifle, leant it against the tree, and continued to scan the skyline with his glasses, feeling all the while a bit of a brute.

At the same time he experienced a sensation of pleasure at the immunity from mental sufferings that are generally supposed to afflict men under these conditions.  He felt like a man who unexpectedly finds a five-pound note, the very existence of which he had forgotten, hidden away in some unusual pocket.  It was something of the same sensation that he used to have at school, when by chance he saw other boys working at impositions which he had himself escaped.

The time came when it was no longer expedient to remain in the wood, so they advanced, flitting from tree to tree, back to the edge of the forest.  The view was rather restricted from where the Subaltern was, apparently on the right of where the full force of the attack was breaking.

“Plop-plop-plop,” the machine-gun spluttered with an amazing air of detached insistence.  The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of their own.  Shells, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an impression of passion, of untameable wrath.  Rifle-fire is as inconstant in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard in the “tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp” of its crescendos and diminuendoes.  But the machine-gun is different from these.  It strikes a higher note, and can be heard above the roar of the bursting shells.  It is mechanical, there is nothing about it of human passion; it is a machine, and a most deadly one at that.

The Colonel dashed out into the open and dragged a wounded gunner into the comparative shelter of the wood.  Many more acts scarcely less heroic were performed.

At last the moment came to retire.  The guns had already rattled through the line, and the companies drew away from the edge of the wood, re-formed with great speed, and were soon marching once more in column of route along the road.

The Subaltern felt exhausted in a way that he had never felt so badly before.  The withdrawal from the actual scene of battle seemed to leave a gulf in his inside that positively yawned.  It was not only the apparent uselessness of trying to stem the German tide that depressed him.  There was something more than that.  He felt like a man who wakes after a heavy, drug-induced slumber.  The sudden cessation of the intense excitement of battles leaves the brain empty and weary.  At such moments the hopelessness of the whole thing appalled and depressed him.  The uncertainty of the future hurt him.  Nor was he alone in this state of mind.  Not a voice was raised to break the throbbing monotony of the march.  Heads were bent low.