et any sleep at all. I lay tossing about on my bed, now
hoping, now despairing. I thought of home mostly, but once or twice I
thought of the kids in the school where I taught--to die like this after
the send-off they gave me! Still, they wouldn't know, they'd think I was
killed in an accident, and that was some consolation to me. And the next
morning--I can't bear to think of it--nothing happened: that was just
the terrible thing about it--nothing happened. The day passed and then
another day. At times I longed to be taken out and shot, and once or
twice I felt I didn't care about anything. I didn't care whether I died
or not. A week passed and then another week. I don't know how I lived
through it. Then, one day, I was told to pack up and rejoin my unit. I
don't know exactly what I did, but I think I must have gone hysterical.
I remember some N.C.O. saying I ought to stay a bit because I wasn't
well enough to go up the line. He said he'd speak to the officer and get
me a few days' rest. But the thought of staying in that place made me
shiver. I said I was absolutely all right and went back to my unit.

"But I never found out what had happened--you see, I was only a common
soldier, so they didn't trouble to tell me--until I got a letter from
the Captain who was in charge of me when I was on that forty-three hour
job. He said he'd heard I was in for a court martial for sleeping when
on guard, so he wrote to our headquarters to tell them I'd worked
forty-three hours on end and wasn't fit to do a guard after a spell like
that. Then they must have made a lot of inquiries--I expect there's a
whole file of papers about me at headquarters. Anyhow, that's how I got
off--it's more than a month ago now. Well, yesterday morning I was put
on guard again. I tried to get out of it, but the officer said I was
swinging the lead and he wouldn't listen to any excuses. I told him I'd
had insomnia overnight and could hardly keep my eyes open. I said I'd do
anything rather than a guard--a fatigue job or a patrol, no matter how
dangerous, as long as it kept me on the move. The very thought of doing
a guard made me tremble all over. He swore at me and said he'd heard
these tales before and told me to shut up and get on with it. Well, I
had to stand in the trench in front of a steel plate with holes in it
through which I had to peer. It was just about daybreak. There was a
tree growing about fifty yards off. It had been knocked about pretty
bad