But next time!  They wanted another try for that trench, these survivors.  No matter about anything else—­the battalion must have another chance.  You appreciated this from a few words and more from the stubborn resolution in the bearing of all.  There was no “let-us-at-’em-again” frightfulness.  In order to end this war you must “lick” one side or the other, and these men were not “licked.”  You were sorry that you had gone to see them.  It was like lacerating a wound.

One could only assure them, in his faith in their gallantry, that they would win next time.  And oh, how you wanted them to win!  They deserved to win because they were such manly losers.

At home in their rough wooden houses in camp we found a battalion which had won—­the same undemonstrative type as the one that had lost; the same simplicity and kindly hospitality, which gives life at the front a charm in the midst of its tragedy, from these men of one of the dependable line regiments.  This colonel knew the other colonel, and he said about the other what his fellow-officers had said:  it was not his fault; he was a good man.  If the guns were not “on,” what happened to him was bound to happen to anybody.  They had been “on” for the winning battalion; perfectly “on.”  They had buried the machine-guns and the Germans with them.

When a man goes into the kind of charge that either battalion made he gives himself up for lost.  The psychology is simple.  You are going to keep on until------!

Well, as Mr. Atkins has remarked in his own terse way, a battle was a lot of noise all around you and suddenly a big bang in your ear; and then somebody said, “please open your mouth and take this!” and you found yourself in a white, quiet place full of cots.

The winning battalion was amazed how easily the thing was done.  They had “walked in.”  They were a little surprised to be alive—­thanks to the guns.  “Here we are!  Here we are again!” as the song at the front goes.  It is all a lottery.  Make up your mind to draw the death number; and if you don’t, that is “velvet.”  Army courage these days is highly sensitized steel in response to will.

They had won; there was a credit mark in the regimental record.  All had won; nobody in particular, but the battalion, the lot of them.  They did not boast about it.  The thing just happened.  They were alive and enjoying the sheer fact of life, writing letters home, rereading letters from home, looking at the pictures in illustrated papers, as they leaned back and smoked their brier-wood pipes and discussed politics with that freedom and directness of opinion which is an Englishman’s pastime and his birthright.

The captain who was describing the fight had retired from the army, gone into business, and returned as a reserve officer.  The guns were to stop firing at a given moment.  As the minute-hand lay over the figure on his wrist-watch he dashed for the broken parapet, still in the haze of dust from shell-bursts, to find not a German in sight.  All were under cover.  He enacted the ridiculous scene with humorous appreciation of how he came face to face with a German as he turned a traverse.  He was ready with his revolver and the other was not, and the other was his prisoner.