undred hours--two hundred. And if you had been there all by
yourself, you would never have dreamed of shooting over the edge of the
trenches--you would most probably have been crouching down in the pit.
But as you happen not to be alone, this can't be done. Will the enemy's
ammunition never give out? It's awful the way he keeps on shooting.

And that terrible thirst! Your throat is parched and your teeth feel
blunt from grinding the grains of sand which fly into your face whenever
an impudent little puff of smoke jumps up directly in front of you.
Sssst. The mosquitoes keep on singing, and the bees buzz perpetually.
Those dogs over there, those wretches, those-- Buzz, buzz, buzz--it
never stops, never. Over there to the right somebody cracks a joke and
several soldiers laugh. "Aim carefully, fire slowly!" sounds the warning
voice of the lieutenant. And it's all done on an empty stomach--a
perfectly empty stomach.

Just as the field-kitchen wagon had arrived this morning, a shell had
exploded in the road and it was all over with the kitchen-wagon. How
long ago that seemed! And the bees keep on humming. Bang! that hit the
sergeant right in the middle of the forehead. Is this never going to
stop? Never? You chew sand, you breathe sand, burning dry sand, which
passes through your intestines like fire. And then that horrible, faint,
sickening feeling in the stomach when you feel the ambulance men
creeping up behind to take away another one of your comrades! How
terrible he looks, how he screams! You are quite incensed to think that
anybody can yell like that! What a fool! "Aim carefully, fire slowly,"
warns the lieutenant. Bouncing puffs of smoke again! And sand in your
mouth and fire in your intestines. You think continually of water,
beautiful, clear, ice-cold water, never-ending streams of water-- A
roaring, howling and crashing overhead, the clatter of splinters, a
sharp pain in your brain and a horrible feeling in your stomach and all
the time it goes buzz, buzz, buzz--ssst--ssst--buzz, buzz, buzz----

That is war, not the pictures that people see at home, all those lucky
people who have lots of water, who can go where they like and are not
forced to stay where the bees keep up a continual buzz, buzz, buzz----

Colonel Katterfeld was kneeling on the ground examining the map of
Hilgard and marking several positions with a pencil. He could overhear
the conversation of the soldiers under the board-covering next to his
o