here
relentless courage.

"Hello, Mr. Y-Man, don't you want to see a fellow that has three holes
through him and still going strong?"

"You don't really mean it, do you? Show him to me. I want to look into
the eyes of such a man." They led me over to a bunch of soldiers who
had just come out of the line and there in the center of an admiring
crowd was my man, happy as a lark. His three wounds--one in the left
breast, one in the thigh, and a scalp wound--had been dressed, and
while these wounds had glorified him in the eyes of his comrades, _he_
was ready to _forget_ them.

Even though a hundred shells exploding near by miss you, and you
become convinced that Fritz does not really have your name and
address, yet each explosion registers its shock on the nerve centers.
If this be long-continued, the nerves give way and you find yourself a
shell-shock patient, tagged and on your way to one of the quiet back
areas where you can forget the war and get a grip upon yourself again.

Holding the line in open warfare costs a heavy toll in human life, but
here again our boys showed their invincible spirit. Not once did I see
a Yankee that showed any eagerness to get away from the line. The
mortally wounded accepted the sacrifice they had been called upon to
make without bemoaning fate, and remained cheerful to the end. Of
course when a man was "_facing West_" he longed for the loved faces
and the heaven of home. We who had our own "little heaven" back in the
homeland knew and instinctively read those sacred thoughts and prayers
and gave just the hand-pressure of deep sympathy.

To have _spoken_ of home at such a time would have been to tear the
heart already breaking, with a deep anguish that would interfere with
their possibility of recovery. So the cheery word of hope and faith
was given, and any final message quietly taken and faithfully and
sacredly fulfilled.

The wounded men whom we met coming out of the line who were not
"facing West" were with one accord hopeful of speedy recovery, not
that they might "save their own skin" and get back home alive, but
that they might get back into the fight and help to put forever out
of commission that devilish military machine that had threatened the
democratic freedom of the world.

Then again there were the boys who had miraculously escaped being
wounded, and after days in the very bowels of hell, which no pen can
picture and no tongue recite, had been released from the line a