ound them by shell-bursts, why, then, it is the attitude best
suited to develop the fighting quality of the British. They had it from
their officers who, in turn, perhaps, had it in part from such British
regulars as the brigadier, though mostly I think that it was inborn
racial phlegm.

I met the five officers who were the survivors of the twenty in one
battalion, the five who had "carried through." One was a barrister,
another just out of Oxford, a third, as I remember, a real estate broker
in a small town. They told their stories without a gesture, quite as if
they were giving an account of a game of golf. It might have seemed
callous, but you knew better.

You knew when they said that it was "a bit stiff," or "a bit thick," or
"it looked as if they had us," what inexpressible emotion lay behind the
accepted army phrases. The truth was they would not permit themselves to
think of the void in their lines made by the death of their comrades.
They had drawn the curtain on all incidents which had not the appeal of
action and finality as a part of the business of "going through." One
officer with a twitch of the lips remarked almost casually that new
officers and drafts were arriving and that it would seem strange to see
so many new faces in the mess.

Those of their old comrades who were not dead were already in hospital
in England. When an officer who had been absent joined the group he
brought the news that one of their number who had been badly hit would
live. The others' quiet ejaculation of "Good!" had a thrill back of it
which communicated its joy to me. Eight of the wounded had not been
seriously hit, which meant that these would return and that, after all,
only four were dead. This was the first intimate indication I had of how
the offensive exposing the whole bodies of men in a charge against the
low-velocity shrapnel bullets and high-velocity bullets from rifles and
machine guns must result in the old ratio of only one mortal wound for
every five men hit.

There was consolation in that fact. It was another advantage of the war
of movement as compared with the war of shambles in trenches. And none,
from the general down to the privates, had really any idea of how
glorious a part they had played. They had merely "done their bit" and
taken what came their way--and they had "gone through."

XII

THE STORMING OF CONTALMAISON

The mighty animal of war makes ready for another effort--New charts
at