that an army can be called upon to face. Even without
mud and without Germans it would be a very difficult task to feed and
look after a million men on the move; with these two discomforts
movement becomes almost impossible.

It is only after you have seen a battery of field artillery on the move
in winter that you can realise at all the enormous importance of good
weather when an advance is to be made. You must watch the horses
labouring and plunging in mud that reaches nearly to their girths; you
must see the sweating, half-naked men striving, with outstanding veins,
to force the wheels round; you must hear the sucking cry of the mud
when it slackens its grip; and you must remember that this is only a
battery of light guns that is being moved.

It is mud, then, that is the great enemy. It is the mud, then, and not
faulty organisation or German prowess that you must blame if we do not
advance as fast as you would like. Even if we were not to advance
another yard in another year, people in England should not be
disheartened. "Out there" we are facing one of the worst of foes. If we
do not advance, or if we advance too slowly, remember that it is mud
that is the cause--not the German guns.

IV

THE SURPRISE ATTACK

"Do you really feel quite fit for active service again?" asked the
President of the Medical Board.

It was not without reason that Roger Dymond hesitated before he gave his
answer, for nerves are difficult things to deal with. It is surprising,
but it is true, that you never find a man who is afraid the first time
he goes under fire. There are thousands who are frightened
beforehand--frightened that they will "funk it" when the time comes, but
when they see men who have been out for months "ducking" as each shell
passes overhead they begin to think what brave fellows they are, and
they wonder what fear is. But after they have been in the trenches for
weeks, when they realise what a shell can do, their nerve begins to go;
they start when they hear a rifle fired, and they crouch down close to
the ground at the whistle of a passing shell.

Thus had it been with Roger Dymond. At the beginning of the war he had
enjoyed himself--if anyone could enjoy that awful retreat and awful
advance. He had been one of the first officers to receive the Military
Cross, for brilliant work by the canal at Givenchy; he had laughed and
joked as he lay all day in the open and listened to the bullets that
went "pht" a