to run. We all wanted to. But Owens is a nervy guy and he kept
whispering. Another machine-gun cut loose, and bullets rained over us.
Like hail they hit somewhere ahead, scattering the gravel. We'd almost
reached our line when Smith jumped up and ran. He said afterward that he
just couldn't help himself. The suspense was awful. I know. I've been a
clerk in a bank! Get that? And there I was under a hail of Hun lead,
without being able to understand why, or feel that any time had passed
since giving up my job to go to war. Queer how I saw my old desk!...
Well, that's how Smith got his. I heard the bullets spat him, sort of
thick and soft.... Ugh!... Owens and I dragged him along, and finally
into the trench. He had a bullet through his shoulder and leg. Guess
he'll live, all right.... Boys, take this from me. Nobody can _tell_ you
what a machine-gun is like. A rifle, now, is not so much. You get shot
at, and you know the man must reload and aim. That takes time. But a
machine-gun! Whew! It's a comb--a fine-toothed comb--and you're the
louse it's after! You hear that steady rattle, and then you hear bullets
everywhere. Think of a man against a machine-gun! It's not a square
deal."

Dixon was one of the listeners. He laughed.

"Rogers, I'd like to have been with you. Next time I'll volunteer. You
had action--a run for your money. That's what I enlisted for. Standing
still--doing nothing but wait--that drives me half mad. My years of
football have made action necessary. Otherwise I go stale in mind and
body.... Last night, before you went on that scouting trip, I had been
on duty two hours. Near midnight. The shelling had died down. All became
quiet. No flares--no flashes anywhere. There was a luminous kind of glow
in the sky--moonlight through thin clouds. I had to listen and watch.
But I couldn't keep back my thoughts. There I was, a soldier, facing No
Man's Land, across whose dark space were the Huns we have come to regard
as devils in brutality, yet less than men.... And I thought of home. No
man knows what home really is until he stands that lonely midnight
guard. A shipwrecked sailor appreciates the comforts he once had; a
desert wanderer, lost and starving, remembers the food he once wasted; a
volunteer soldier, facing death in the darkness, thinks of his home! It
is a hell of a feeling!... And, thinking of home, I remembered my girl.
I've been gone four months--have been at the front seven days (or is it
seven yea