officers had said: it was not his
fault; he was a good man. If the guns were not "on," what happened
to him was bound to happen to anybody. They had been "on" for the
winning battalion; perfectly "on." They had buried the machine-guns
and the Germans with them.

When a man goes into the kind of charge that either battalion made
he gives himself up for lost. The psychology is simple. You are going
to keep on until------!

Well, as Mr. Atkins has remarked in his own terse way, a battle was a
lot of noise all around you and suddenly a big bang in your ear; and
then somebody said, "please open your mouth and take this!" and
you found yourself in a white, quiet place full of cots.

The winning battalion was amazed how easily the thing was done.
They had "walked in." They were a little surprised to be alive--thanks
to the guns. "Here we are! Here we are again!" as the song at the
front goes. It is all a lottery. Make up your mind to draw the death
number; and if you don't, that is "velvet." Army courage these days is
highly sensitized steel in response to will.

They had won; there was a credit mark in the regimental record. All
had won; nobody in particular, but the battalion, the lot of them. They
did not boast about it. The thing just happened. They were alive and
enjoying the sheer fact of life, writing letters home, rereading letters
from home, looking at the pictures in illustrated papers, as they
leaned back and smoked their brier-wood pipes and discussed
politics with that freedom and directness of opinion which is an
Englishman's pastime and his birthright.

The captain who was describing the fight had retired from the army,
gone into business, and returned as a reserve officer. The guns were
to stop firing at a given moment. As the minute-hand lay over the
figure on his wrist-watch he dashed for the broken parapet, still in the
haze of dust from shell-bursts, to find not a German in sight. All were
under cover. He enacted the ridiculous scene with humorous
appreciation of how he came face to face with a German as he
turned a traverse. He was ready with his revolver and the other was
not, and the other was his prisoner.

There was nothing gruesome about listening to a diffident soldier
explaining how he "bombed them out," and you shared his
amusement over the surprise of a German who stuck up his head
from a dug-out within a foot of the face of a British soldier who was
peeping inside to see if any more Germa