“We was ready for to go over the top an’ waitin’ for the whistle to blow.  We didn’t ’alf ’ave the wind up.  You could ’ear the teeth chatterin’ all along the trench.  I was shiverin’ all over, I....”

“Next man!” The conversation stopped while the next man went across, but having once begun to tell their experiences, the men would not stop altogether, and after a brief silence an elderly little man with a bandaged foot said: 

“What I couldn’t get over was insomnia.  I could never sleep at the right time and I was always dead tired on duty.  Once I worked forty-three hours at a stretch and after that I had to do a guard in our trench.  I felt sleepy all of a sudden.  I pinched myself and banged the butt of my rifle on my toes, but everything seemed to swim round me.  Then, I don’t know how, I went off to sleep.  I was awakened by an officer who shook me and swore at me.  I was a bit dazed at first and then suddenly it struck me what had happened.  I never had the wind up so much in all my life and I implored him not to report me.  I don’t remember what happened next, I was in such a state.  But he did report me.  I got a court martial and was sentenced to death for sleeping at my post.  They put me into the guard-room and I expected to be shot the next day.  It was a rotten feeling, I can tell you.  I didn’t think about myself so much as about the wife and the little boy.  I wouldn’t go through a night like that again for anything.  But I went to sleep all the same.  I woke up the next morning when someone came into the guard-room.  I didn’t know where I was for a second or two, and then in a flash I realized I’d got to die.  I don’t mind admitting that I rested my face against the wall and blubbered like a kid.  Anyone would have done the same, I don’t care what you say.  But the man who’d just come in said: 

“’Pull yourself together, old chap—­you’re all right for to-day, anyhow.’  I sat bolt upright and stared at him.

“‘They’re not going to shoot me?’

“‘Not to-day,’ he answered.  ’Cheer up, all sorts of things might happen before to-morrow.’

“The joy I felt was so big that I can’t tell you how big it was.  But I soon felt miserable again.  I couldn’t understand what had happened.  I didn’t know whether I was going to die or live.  The uncertainty became so terrible that I wished I’d been shot that morning—­all would have been over then.  They brought me a meal, but I couldn’t eat.  I asked them what was going to happen, but they didn’t know.  Another night came, but I didn’t get any sleep at all.  I lay tossing about on my bed, now hoping, now despairing.  I thought of home mostly, but once or twice I thought of the kids in the school where I taught—­to die like this after the send-off they gave me!  Still, they wouldn’t know, they’d think I was killed in an accident, and that was some consolation to me.  And the next morning—­I can’t bear to think of it—­nothing happened:  that was just the terrible thing about