“I know whom you mean,” answered a private of the R.A.M.C.  “He got it that bombing-stunt a few months ago.  It was bloody awful too—­the worst thing I’ve ever been in.  I was standing next to him when the first one exploded.  He flopped down and lay flat on the ground, but I rushed away into the fields with a lot of others.  When it was all over we went back and heard the wounded crying out in a way that was dreadful to hear.  This fellow was still lying on the ground by the duckboards, trembling all over and paralysed with fear.  We went to help the wounded, but he was in such a state that he could not come with us, so we left him behind.  There was an inquiry afterwards and we got into a frightful row for running away.  He got the M.M. for sticking to his post!”

VII

THE GERMAN PUSH

“What madness there is in this arithmetic that counts men by the millions like grains of corn in a bushel....  A newspaper has just written about an encounter with the enemy:  ’Our losses were insignificant, one dead and five wounded.’  It would be interesting to know for whom these losses are insignificant?  For the one who was killed?...  If he were to rise from his grave, would he think the loss ‘insignificant’?  If only he could think of everything from the very beginning, of his childhood, his family, his beloved wife, and how he went to the war and how, seized by the most conflicting thoughts and emotions, he felt afraid, and how it all ended in death and horror....  But they try to convince us that ’our losses are insignificant.’  Think of it, godless writer!  Go to your master the Devil with your clever arithmetic....  How this man revolts me—­may the Devil take him!”

     (ANDREYEFF.)

Throughout the winter one question above all others was discussed by the few who took an interest in the war:  “What were the Germans going to do?” It was clear that they had been able to withdraw many divisions from their Eastern Front.  Would they be numerically equal or superior to the Allies on the Western Front?

On the whole we were of opinion that, whatever happened, our positions would prove impregnable, although we observed with some astonishment that there were no extensive trench systems or fortified places behind our lines.  I doubted whether the Germans would even attempt to break through—­I thought they would merely hold the Western Front and throw the Allies out of Macedonia, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.

The winter was over and the fine weather had set in.  For several months we had been working in a wood-yard and saw-mills.  Our lives had become unspeakably monotonous, but the coming of warm days banished much of our dreariness.  The hazy blue sky was an object of real delight.  I often contrived to slip away from my work and lean idly against a wall in the mild sunshine.  At times I was so filled with the sense of physical well-being, and so penetrated by the sensuous enjoyment of warmth and colour, that I even forgot the war.