No; it is not at the moment of a charge that men fear death.  As in the case of those who die in bed, Nature has an anesthetic ready for the emergency.  It is before an attack that a man is more liable to fear—­before his blood is hot, and while he still has leisure to think.  The trouble may begin a day or two in advance, when he is first told of the attack which is likely to mean death to himself and so many of his chums.  This part is comparatively easy.  It is fairly easy to be philosophic if one has plenty of time.  One indulges in regrets about the home one may never see again.  One is rather sorry for oneself; but such self-pity is not wholly unpleasant.  One feels mildly heroic, which is not wholly disagreeable either.  Very few men are afraid of death in the abstract.  Very few men believe in hell, or are tortured by their consciences.  They are doubtful about after-death, hesitating between a belief in eternal oblivion and a belief in a new life under the same management as the present; and neither prospect fills them with terror.  If only one’s “people” would be sensible, one would not mind.

But as the hour approaches when the attack is due to be launched the strain becomes more tense.  The men are probably cooped up in a very small space.  Movement is very restricted.  Matches must not be struck.  Voices must be hushed to a whisper.  Shells bursting and machine guns rattling bring home the grim reality of the affair.  It is then more than at any other time in an attack that a man has to “face the spectres of the mind,” and lay them if he can.  Few men care for those hours of waiting.

Of all the hours of dismay that come to a soldier there are really few more trying to the nerves than when he is sitting in a trench under heavy fire from high-explosive shells or bombs from trench mortars.  You can watch these bombs lobbed up into the air.  You see them slowly wobble down to earth, there to explode with a terrific detonation that sets every nerve in your body a-jangling.  You can do nothing.  You cannot retaliate in any way.  You simply have to sit tight and hope for the best.  Some men joke and smile; but their mirth is forced.  Some feign stoical indifference, and sit with a paper and a pipe; but as a rule their pipes are out and their reading a pretence.  There are few men, indeed, whose hearts are not beating faster, and whose nerves are not on edge.

But you can’t call this “the fear of death”; it is a purely physical reaction of danger and detonation.  It is not fear of death as death.  It is not fear of hurt as hurt.  It is an infinitely intensified dislike of suspense and uncertainty, sudden noise and shock.  It belongs wholly to the physical organism, and the only cure that I know is to make an act of personal dissociation from the behaviour of one’s flesh.  Your teeth may chatter and your knees quake, but as long as the real you disapproves and derides this absurdity of the flesh, the composite you can