ome bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."

"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own
part I am more afraid of ----"

"What?"

"---- the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"

I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear
that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of (p. 112)
death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet,
and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am
more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me.
Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about
one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning
over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp,
penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep
as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the
grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing,
agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit
below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It
thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it
before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know
what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the
yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's
head.

When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a
deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench
of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By (p. 113)
day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I
awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The
place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered
down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by
concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a
groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was
being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile
cries that slowly died away into silence.

Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
down, rooms blocked up