rove to fix that phrase firmly in front of his mind. "If I can
remember that," he thought, "it will stop me going back, anyway," and
he repeated: "If you go back you _will_ die, if you go back you _will_
die," over and over.

It is true that, for all his repetition, when a field battery, hidden
close by the side of the road on which they marched, roared in a sudden
and ear-splitting salvo of six guns, for the instant he thought he was
under fire and that a huge shell had burst somewhere desperately close
to them. He had jumped, his comrades assured him afterwards, a clear
foot and a half off the ground, and he himself remembered that his
first involuntary glance and thought flashed to the deep ditch that ran
alongside the road.

When he came to the trenches, at last, and filed down the narrow
communication-trench and into his Company's appointed position in the
deep ditch with a narrow platform along its front that was the forward
fire-trench, he remembered with unpleasant clearness that instinctive
start and thought of taking cover. By that time he had actually been
under fire, had heard the shells rush over him and the shattering noise
of their burst; had heard the bullets piping and humming and hissing
over the communication- and firing-trenches. He took a little comfort
from the fact that he had not felt any great fear then, but he had to
temper that by the admission that there was little to be afraid of
there in the shelter of the deep trench. It was what he would do and
feel when he climbed out of cover on to the exposed and bullet-swept
flat before the trench that he was in doubt about; for the Hotwaters
had been told that at nine o'clock there was to be a brief but intense
bombardment on a section of trench in front of them which had been
captured from us the day before, and which, after several
counter-attacks had failed, was to be taken that morning by this
battalion of Hotwaters.

At half-past eight, nobody entering their trench would have dreamed
that the Hotwaters were going into a serious action in half an hour.
The men were lounging about, squatting on the firing-step, chaffing and
talking--laughing even--quite easily and naturally; some were smoking,
and others had produced biscuits and bully beef from their haversacks
and were calmly eating their breakfast.

Everton felt a glow of pride as he looked at them. These men were his
friends, his fellows, his comrades: they were of the Hotwater
Guards--hi