ans the approach of a
nervous breakdown, the second a near death. There are very few, indeed,
who retain a nervous balance and a calm judgment. And all have a harsh
frightened voice. If you came suddenly out here, you would think they
were all mortally afraid. But it is only giving orders for hours
together under a heavy fire.

Battle noises are terrific. At the present moment a howitzer is going
strong behind this, and the concussion is tremendous. The noise is like
dropping a traction-engine on a huge tin tray. A shell passing away from
you over your head is like the loud crackling of a newspaper close to
your ear. It makes a sort of deep reverberating crackle in the air,
gradually lessening, until there is a dull boom, and a mile or so away
you see a thick little cloud of white smoke in the air or a pear-shaped
cloud of grey-black smoke on the ground. Coming towards you a shell
makes a cutting, swishing note, gradually getting higher and higher,
louder and louder. There is a longer note one instant and then it
ceases. Shrapnel bursting close to you has the worst sound.

It is almost funny in a village that is being shelled. Things simply
disappear. You are standing in an archway a little back from the road--a
shriek of shrapnel. The windows are broken and the tiles rush clattering
into the street, while little bullets and bits of shell jump like
red-hot devils from side to side of the street, ricochetting until their
force is spent. Or a deeper bang, a crash, and a whole house tumbles
down.

_3/4-hour later._--Curious life this. Just after I had finished the last
sentence, I was called out to take a message to a battery telling them
to shell a certain village. Here am I wandering out, taking orders for
the complete destruction of a village and probably for the death of a
couple of hundred men[20] without a thought, except that the roads are
very greasy and that lunch time is near.

Again, yesterday, I put our Heavies in action, and in a quarter of an
hour a fine old church, with what appeared from the distance a
magnificent tower, was nothing but a grotesque heap of ruins. The
Germans were loopholing it for defence.

Oh the waste, the utter damnable waste of everything out here--men,
horses, buildings, cars, everything. Those who talk about war being a
salutary discipline are those who remain at home. In a modern war there
is little room for picturesque gallantry or picture-book heroism. We are
all either anima