“We were all eager for scalps,” writes one of the Royal Engineers, “and I took the cap, sword, and lance of a Uhlan I shot through the chest.”  An artilleryman says a gunner in his battery was “so anxious to see the enemy,” that he jumped up to look, and got his leg shot away.  Others tell of the intense curiosity of the young soldiers to see everything that is going on, of their reckless neglect of cover, and of the difficulty of holding them back when they see a comrade fall.  “In spite of orders, some of my men actually charged a machine gun,” an officer related.  After the first baptism of fire any lingering fear is dispelled.  “I don’t think we were ever afraid at all,” says another soldier, “but we got into action so quickly that we hadn’t time to think about it.”  “Habit soon overcomes the first instinctive fear,” writes a third, “and then the struggle is always palpitating.”

Of course, the fighting affects men in different ways.  Some see the ugliness, the horror of it all, grow sick at the sight, and suffer from nausea.  Others, seeing deeper significance in this desolation of life, realize the wickedness and waste of it; as one Highlander expresses it:  “Being out there, and seeing what we see, makes us feel religious.”  But the majority of the men have the instinct for fighting, quickly adapt themselves to war conditions, and enter with zest into the joy of battle.  These happy warriors are the men who laugh, and sing, and jest in the trenches.  They take a strangely intimate pleasure in the danger around them, and when they fall they die like Mr. Julian Smith of the Intelligence Department, declaring that they “loved the fighting.”  All the wounded beg the doctors and nurses to hurry up and let them return to the front.  “I was enjoying it until I was put under,” writes Lance-Corporal Leslie, R.E.  “I must get back and have another go at them,” says Private J. Roe, of the Manchesters.  And so on, letter after letter expressing impatience to get into the firing line.

The artillery is what harasses the men most.  They soon developed a contempt for German rifle fire, and it became a very persistent joke in the trenches.  But nearly all agree that German artillery is “hell let loose.”  That is what the enemy intended it to be, but they did not reckon upon the terrors of Hades making so small an impression upon the British soldier.  There is an illuminating passage in an official statement issued from the General Headquarters: 

“The object of the great proportion of artillery the Germans employ is to beat down the resistance of their enemy by a concentrated and prolonged fire, and to shatter their nerve with high explosives before the infantry attack is launched.  They seem to have relied on doing this with us; but they have not done so, though it has taken them several costly experiments to discover this fact.  From the statements of prisoners, indeed, it appears that they have been greatly disappointed by the moral effect produced by their