against the parapet, and listened to
the explosions all around him. "Oil cans" and "Minnewerfer" bombs came
hurtling through the air, "Crumps" burst with great clouds of black
smoke, bits of "Whizz-bangs" went buzzing past and buried themselves
deep in the ground. Roger Dymond tried to light his cigarette, but his
hand shook so that he could hardly hold the match, and he threw it away
in fear that the men would see how he trembled.

Thousands of people have tried to describe the noise of a shell, but no
man can know what it is like unless he can put himself into a trench to
hear the original thing. There is the metallic roar of waves breaking
just before the rain, there is the whistle of wind through the trees,
there is the rumble of a huge traction engine, and there is the sharp
back-fire of a motor car. With each different sinister noise, Roger
Dymond felt his hold over himself gradually going ... going....

Next to him in the trench crouched Newman, a soldier who had been in
his platoon in the old days when they tramped, sweating and half-dead,
along the broiling roads towards Paris.

"They'm a blasted lot too free with their iron crosses and other
souvenirs," growled that excellent fellow. "I'd rather be fighting them
'and to 'and like we did in that there churchyard near Le Cateau,
wouldn't you, sir?"

Dymond smiled sickly assent, and Newman, being an old soldier, knew what
was the matter with his captain. He watched him as, bit by bit, his
nerve gave way, but he dared not suggest that Dymond should "go sick,"
and he did the only thing that could be done under the circumstances--he
talked as he had never talked before.

"Gawd!" he said after a long monologue that was meant to bring
distraction from the noise of the inferno. "I wish as 'ow we was a bit
closer to the devils so that they couldn't shell us. I'd like to get me
'and round some blighter's ugly neck, too."

A second later a trench-mortar bomb came hurtling down through the air,
and fell on the parados near the two men. There was a pause, then an
awful explosion, which hurled Dymond to the ground, and, as he fell,
Newman's words seemed to run through his head: "I wish as 'ow we was a
bit closer to the devils so that they couldn't shell us." He was aware
of a moment's acute terror, then something in his brain seemed to snap
and everything that followed was vague, for Captain Roger Dymond went
mad.

He remembered clambering out of the trench to get s