gallantry of youth, even the gaiety of
men in these infernal months. Psychology on the Somme was not simple
and straightforward. Men were afraid, but fear was not their dominating
emotion, except in the worst hours. Men hated this fighting, but found
excitement in it, often exultation, sometimes an intense stimulus of
all their senses and passions before reaction and exhaustion. Men became
jibbering idiots with shell-shock, as I saw some of them, but others
rejoiced when they saw our shells plowing into the enemy's earthworks,
laughed at their own narrow escapes and at grotesque comicalities of
this monstrous deviltry. The officers were proud of their men, eager
for their honor and achievement. The men themselves were in rivalry
with other bodies of troops, and proud of their own prowess. They were
scornful of all that the enemy might do to them, yet acknowledged his
courage and power. They were quick to kill him, yet quick also to give
him a chance of life by surrender, and after that were--nine times
out of ten--chivalrous and kindly, but incredibly brutal on the rare
occasions when passion overcame them at some tale of treachery. They had
the pride of the skilled laborer in his own craft, as machine-gunners,
bombers, raiders, trench-mortar--men, and were keen to show their skill,
whatever the risks. They were healthy animals, with animal courage as
well as animal fear, and they had, some of them, a spiritual and moral
fervor which bade them risk death to save a comrade, or to save a
position, or to kill the fear that tried to fetter them, or to lead men
with greater fear than theirs. They lived from hour to hour and forgot
the peril or the misery that had passed, and did not forestall the
future by apprehension unless they were of sensitive mind, with the
worst quality men might have in modern warfare--imagination.

They trained themselves to an intense egotism within narrow boundaries.
Fifty yards to the left, or five hundred, men were being pounded to
death by shell-fire. Fifty yards to the right, or five hundred, men
were being mowed down by machine-gun fire. For the time being their
particular patch was quiet. It was their luck. Why worry about the other
fellow? The length of a traverse in a ditch called a trench might make
all the difference between heaven and hell. Dead bodies were being piled
up on one side of the traverse. A shell had smashed into the platoon
next door. There was a nasty mess. Men sat under th