terror under
conditions as little dangerous as the trenches could be. He managed,
more or less, to hide this terror, as many a worse and many a better
man has done before him, until one day----

The Germans had made a fierce attack, had overborne a section of the
defense and taken a good deal of trenched ground, had been
counter-attacked and partly driven back, had scourged the lost parts
with a fresh tempest of artillery fire and driven in again to close
quarters, to hot bomb and bayonet work; were again checked and for the
moment held.

Private Gerald Bunthrop's battalion had been hurried up to support the
broken and breaking line, was thrust into a badly wrecked trench with
crumbling sides and broken traverses, with many dead and wounded
cumbering the feet of the few defenders, with a reek of high-explosive
fumes catching their throats and nostrils. The open ground beyond the
trench was scattered thick with great heaps of German dead, a few more
sprawled on the broken parapet, another and lesser few were huddled in
the trench itself amongst the many khaki forms. The battalion holding
the trench had been almost annihilated in the task, had in fact at
first been driven out from part of the line and had only reoccupied it
with heavy losses. Bunthrop had with his battalion passed along some
smashed communication trenches and over the open ground this fighting
had covered, and the sights they saw in passing might easily have
shaken the stoutest hearts and nerves. They made the approach, too,
under a destructive fire with high-explosive shells screaming and
crashing over, around, and amongst them, with bullets whistling and
hissing about them and striking the ground with the sound of constantly
exploding Chinese crackers.

Bunthrop himself, to state the fact baldly, was in an agony of fear. He
might have been tempted to bolt, but was restrained by a complete lack
of any idea where to bolt to, by a lingering remnant of self-respect,
and by a firm conviction that he would be dealt with mercilessly if he
openly ran. But when he reached the comparative shelter of the broken
trench all these safeguards of his decent behavior vanished. He flung
himself into the trench, cowered in its deepest part, made not the
slightest attempt to look over the parapet, much less to use his rifle.
There is this much of excuse for him, that on the very instant that
they reached the cover of the trench a bursting high-explosive had
caught the