me earnest to hit something, made sure of my sighting, and
aimed very carefully at a blue back that was dodging about in the corn.
At first I couldn't satisfy myself and didn't shoot, his movements were
so spasmodic and uncertain; then I think he came to a ditch or some such
obstacle and halted for a moment. "GOT you," I whispered, and pulled the
trigger.

'I had the strangest sensations about that man. In the first instance,
when I felt that I had hit him I was irradiated with joy and pride....

'I sent him spinning. He jumped and threw up his arms....

'Then I saw the corn tops waving and had glimpses of him flapping about.
Suddenly I felt sick. I hadn't killed him....

'In some way he was disabled and smashed up and yet able to struggle
about. I began to think....

'For nearly two hours that Prussian was agonising in the corn. Either he
was calling out or some one was shouting to him....

'Then he jumped up--he seemed to try to get up upon his feet with one
last effort; and then he fell like a sack and lay quite still and never
moved again.

'He had been unendurable, and I believe some one had shot him dead. I
had been wanting to do so for some time....'

The enemy began sniping the rifle pits from shelters they made for
themselves in the woods below. A man was hit in the pit next to Barnet,
and began cursing and crying out in a violent rage. Barnet crawled
along the ditch to him and found him in great pain, covered with blood,
frantic with indignation, and with the half of his right hand smashed to
a pulp. 'Look at this,' he kept repeating, hugging it and then extending
it. 'Damned foolery! Damned foolery! My right hand, sir! My right hand!'

For some time Barnet could do nothing with him. The man was consumed by
his tortured realisation of the evil silliness of war, the realisation
which had come upon him in a flash with the bullet that had destroyed
his skill and use as an artificer for ever. He was looking at the
vestiges with a horror that made him impenetrable to any other idea. At
last the poor wretch let Barnet tie up his bleeding stump and help him
along the ditch that conducted him deviously out of range....

When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for water, and all
day long the line of pits suffered greatly from thirst. For food they
had chocolate and bread.

'At first,' he says, 'I was extraordinarily excited by my baptism of
fire. Then as the heat of the day came on I experienc