“Napoleon was right,” observed a small, red-haired lance-corporal, whose remarks generally had a sardonic touch, “when he said the worse the man the better the soldier.  It’s only people who have no imagination and no intelligence who are courageous in modern war.  Nobody with any sense would expose himself unnecessarily and rush a machine-gun position or do the sort of thing they give you a V.C. for.  Of course, there are a few cases where it’s deserved, and it isn’t always the one who deserves it that gets it.  I’m quite certain the refined, sensitive, imaginative kind of man is no good as a soldier.  He may be able to control himself better than the others at first—­educated people are used to self-control—­but in the long run his nerves will give way sooner.  Moral courage is a thing I admire more than anything, but there’s no use for it in the army, in fact it’s worse than useless in the army.  The man who’s too servile to be capable of feeling humiliation and too stupid to understand what danger is—­that’s the man who makes a good, steady soldier.  We’ve seen men so horribly smashed up by bombs that it makes you sick to look at them, and then people expect us not to be afraid of air-raids.  The civvies haven’t seen that sort of thing, so they may well show plenty of pluck, although I believe there are a good many with enough imagination to have the wind up when there’s an air-raid on.”

“Bloody true.  You know, if there was a lot o’ civvies an’ a lot of Tommies in a Blighty air-raid, I reckon the civvies’d show more pluck than the Tommies.  My mate who’s workin’ on munitions told me ’e saw ‘underds o’ soldiers rushin’ to take shelter in the last raid on London.  O’ course there was crowds o’ civvies doin’ the same, but ’e says there was a lot what didn’t seem to care a damn.  The other day we ’ad a bloody parson spoutin’ to us—­’e said war brings out a man’s pluck an’ makes an ’ero of ’im.  I reckon that’s all bloody tosh!  War makes cowards of yer, that’s the ‘ole truth o’ the matter, I don’t care what yer say.  I didn’t know what fear was afore I joined the army.  I know now, you bet!  I’m a bloody coward now—­I don’t mind admittin’ it.  There’s things I used ter do what I wouldn’t dare do now.  When we go up the line I’m in a blue funk from the time I ’ears the first shell burst to the time we goes over the top.  An’ when we goes over I forgets everythink an’ don’t know what I’m doin’.  P’raps I’ll get a V.C. some day wi’out knowin’ what I done ter get it.  And I’m not the only one like that.  Anyone ’oo’s bin out ‘ere a few months an’ says ’e ain’t windy up the line’s a bloody liar, there now....”

“By the way,” I interrupted, “how did that orderly who works in the theatre get his Military Medal—­he had the wind up more than any of us the other night?”