We have heard the story of one in the infantry and of a sapper underground.  Here is the experience of a young Canadian student from McGill University in the artillery: 

“The past weeks have been ten thousand hells.  It is nothing but death, noise, blood, and mud.  There are only two of our sergeants left now and we have to keep up our spirits.  You often feel as if your brain would burst.  I couldn’t begin to describe the inferno human beings pass through every day.  ‘Happy’ was shot to pieces with a shell a few nights ago while in bed, both arms and one leg off.  I carried him for over four hours to the nearest dressing station and then stayed and watched him die.  He never whimpered.  Though in terrible agony, he died game, as he always was.  That is about the hardest knock I have ever had in my life.  He is only one of my many friends that have gone.  Believe me, war is Hell.”

Here is the account of a simple Australian boy in the front trench: 

“Fritz had a machine gun to nearly every ten yards.  I don’t know what became of my friends Hugh and Bill.  They were just beside me, but when I looked around both were gone.  A shell landed just at the side of me, and I think Hugh and Bill were blown to pieces.  I got my wound in the chest and the fragment came out through my back.  I thought my last day had come.  I dropped into a hole, and no sooner had I got in, than Mack got it through the face.  He was able to go back, but I was simply helpless, as my legs refused to move.  Anyhow, I pulled the shovel off my back and dug a little ridge in the side of the trench.  No sooner had I done this than Fritz started to bombard.  One shell fell in the hole in which I was, but exploded in the opposite direction.  Then another came and landed just above my head, but it failed to go off.  Had it gone off I never would have been here now.  I had prayed hard to my God to deliver me from my enemies and when those things happened I felt my prayer was heard and that I was going to come through.  I was there in that hole all day and the next night before anyone came near me.  At last one of the 19th Battalion chaps came along and went for a stretcher for me.”

Such are the varying impressions which a battle makes upon various men.  It is no romance, but a grim reality of life and death.  Far into the night we lie awake and ask ourselves, what is the meaning of it all?

At first on the field of battle one thrills at the sound of mighty and unearthly forces loosed, but in the din we suddenly realize that boys are dying all about us, and that these guns bear swift death and mangling to suffering men.  Between us and the enemy are just a few deep shell holes and a thin red line of flesh and blood, as a human rampart, formed of men who hold their lives in their hands, ready to make the great sacrifice.  Behind us are the hidden guns and the support trenches in the narrow strip of hard-won territory.  Behind these are the