d a peculiarly inept description of their feelings. Not that
the descriptions in many cases are not wonderfully good! They are--but
they represent the point of view of the spectator in a pageant; not the
point of view of one of the actors. To him they are meaningless: he
only knows the intense vital part he plays himself. The shell that
burst next door to him and killed his sergeant is only one of similar
thousands to the looker-on behind. . . .

And so, in a dazed world of his own, Reginald Simpkins, Lance-Corporal
and sometime pride of Mogg's, walked over No Man's Land. Every now and
then he looked mechanically to his left and right, and grinned. At
least he made a contortion with his facial muscles, which experience
told him used to produce a grin. He did it to encourage the six.
Whether he succeeded or not is immaterial: the intention was good, even
if the peculiar tightness of his skin spoiled the result. Occasionally
he spoke. No one could have heard what he said, but once again the
intention was good.

"Steady, boys--come on." He said it four or five times and punctuated
it with grins. Then he tripped over a body and cursed.

He wondered if he was doing all right; he wondered if Shorty was
pleased with him. The funk seemed to have gone: in its place had come
a kind of dazed doggedness, while a fury of impatience to justify
himself and his powers of leadership shook him at times. Surely to God
they could go faster than this cursed crawl. Why was the barrage
lifting so slowly? It seemed interminable that walk over the torn-up
earth; and yet the German trenches were still some way off.

He grinned again, and turned round just in time to see the garage
assistant next to him fall forward into a shell hole, and lie with his
head stuck in the slimy ooze at the bottom. He frowned, and then
almost uncomprehendingly he saw the back of the fallen man's head. Of
course--he was shot, that's what it was: his six were reduced to five.

"Steady, boys--come on." As he spoke he felt something catch his coat,
and he looked down irritably on feeling the material tear. It was a
strand of barbed wire that stuck up from the ground, with its free end
loose. They had come to the wire. . . .

In all directions--twisted and torn, with ends that stuck up, and stray
strands uncut--was wire: thick and rusty it coiled in and out between
the screw pickets--cut to pieces, but still there. Men picked their
way over it g