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that an army can be called upon to face. Even without mud and without Germans it would be a very difficult task to feed and look after a million men on the move; with these two discomforts movement becomes almost impossible. It is only after you have seen a battery of field artillery on the move in winter that you can realise at all the enormous importance of good weather when an advance is to be made. You must watch the horses labouring and plunging in mud that reaches nearly to their girths; you must see the sweating, half-naked men striving, with outstanding veins, to force the wheels round; you must hear the sucking cry of the mud when it slackens its grip; and you must remember that this is only a battery of light guns that is being moved. It is mud, then, that is the great enemy. It is the mud, then, and not faulty organisation or German prowess that you must blame if we do not advance as fast as you would like. Even if we were not to advance another yard in another year, people in England should not be disheartened. "Out there" we are facing one of the worst of foes. If we do not advance, or if we advance too slowly, remember that it is mud that is the cause--not the German guns. IV THE SURPRISE ATTACK "Do you really feel quite fit for active service again?" asked the President of the Medical Board. It was not without reason that Roger Dymond hesitated before he gave his answer, for nerves are difficult things to deal with. It is surprising, but it is true, that you never find a man who is afraid the first time he goes under fire. There are thousands who are frightened beforehand--frightened that they will "funk it" when the time comes, but when they see men who have been out for months "ducking" as each shell passes overhead they begin to think what brave fellows they are, and they wonder what fear is. But after they have been in the trenches for weeks, when they realise what a shell can do, their nerve begins to go; they start when they hear a rifle fired, and they crouch down close to the ground at the whistle of a passing shell. Thus had it been with Roger Dymond. At the beginning of the war he had enjoyed himself--if anyone could enjoy that awful retreat and awful advance. He had been one of the first officers to receive the Military Cross, for brilliant work by the canal at Givenchy; he had laughed and joked as he lay all day in the open and listened to the bullets that went "pht" a
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