aunched a counter-attack
immediately after the bombardment, we should have had difficulty in
holding the position. But it was only what Tommy called "a big 'ap'orth
o' 'ate." No attempt was made to follow up the advantage, and we at once
set to work rebuilding. The loose earth had to be put into sandbags, the
parapets mended, the holes, blasted out by shells, filled in.

The worst of it was that we could not get away from the sight of the
mangled bodies of our comrades. Arms and legs stuck out of the wreckage,
and on every side we saw distorted human faces, the faces of men we had
known, with whom we had lived and shared hardships and dangers for months
past. Those who have never lived through experiences of this sort cannot
possibly know the horror of them. It is not in the heat of battle that
men lose their reason. Battle frenzy is, perhaps, a temporary madness.
The real danger comes when the strain is relaxed. Men look about them and
see the bodies of their comrades torn to pieces as though they had been
hacked and butchered by fiends. One thinks of the human body as
inviolate, a beautiful and sacred thing. The sight of it dismembered or
disemboweled, trampled in the bottom of a trench, smeared with blood and
filth, is so revolting as to be hardly endurable.

And yet, we had to endure it. We could not escape it. Whichever way we
looked, there were the dead. Worse even than the sight of dead men were
the groans and entreaties of those lying wounded in the trenches waiting
to be taken back to the dressing-stations.

"I'm shot through the stomach, matey! Can't you get me back to the
ambulance? Ain't they _some_ way you can get me back out o' this?"

"Stick it, old lad! You won't 'ave long to wite. They'll be some of the
Red Cross along 'ere in a jiffy now."

"Give me a lift, boys, can't you? Look at my leg! Do you think it'll 'ave
to come off? Maybe they could save it if I could get to 'ospital in time!
Won't some of you give me a lift? I can 'obble along with a little 'elp."

"Don't you fret, sonny! You're a-go'n' to ride back in a stretcher
presently. Keep yer courage up a little w'ile longer."

Some of the men, in their suffering, forgot every one but themselves, and
it was not strange that they should. Others, with more iron in their
natures, endured fearful agony in silence. During memorable half-hours,
filled with danger and death, many of my gross misjudgments of character
were made clear to me. Men whom no