When the heroic things are done and there comes a lull in the fighting, it is sweet to sink down in the trenches worn out, exhausted, unutterly drowsy, and snatch a brief unconscious hour of sleep.  Some of the men fall asleep with the rifles still hot in their hands, their heads resting on the barrels.  Magnificently as they endure fatigue, there comes a time when the strain is intolerable, and, “beat to the world,” as one officer describes it, they often sink into profound sleep, like horses, standing.  At these times it seems as if nothing could wake them.  Shrapnel may thunder around them in vain; they never move a muscle.  In Mr. Stephen Crane’s fine phrase, they “sleep the brave sleep of wearied men.”

III

HUMOR IN THE TRENCHES

One of the most surprising of the many revelations of this war has been that of the gaiety, humor, and good nature of the British soldier.  All the correspondents, English and French, remark upon it.  A new Tommy Atkins has arisen, whose cheery laugh and joke and music-hall song have enlivened not only the long, weary, exhausting marches, but even the grim and unnerving hours in the trenches.  Theirs was not the excitement of men going into battle, nervous and uncertain of their behavior under fire; it was rather that of light-hearted first-nighters waiting in the queue to witness some new and popular drama.

“A party of the King’s Own,” writes Sapper Mugridge of the Royal Engineers, “went into their first action shouting ’Early doors this way!  Early doors, ninepence!’” “The Kaiser’s crush” is the description given by a sergeant of the Coldstream Guards as he watched a dense mass of Germans emerging to the attack from a wood, and prepared to meet them with the bayonet.  When first the fierce German searchlights were turned on the British lines a little cockney in the Middlesex Regiment exclaimed to his comrade:  “Lord, Bill, it’s just like a play, an’ us in the limelight”; and as the artillery fusillade passed over their heads, and a great ironical cheer rose from the British trenches, he added:  “But it’s the Kaiser wot’s gettin’ the bird.”

Many of the wounded who have been invalided home were asked whether this humor in the trenches is the real thing, or only an affected drollery to conceal the emotions the men feel in the face of death; but they all declare that it is quite spontaneous.  One old soldier, well accustomed to being under fire, freely admitted that he had never been with such a cheery and courageous lot of youngsters in his life.  “They take everything that comes to them as ‘all in the game,’” he said, “and nothing could now damp their spirits.”