As far as I know, men going into action are, as a rule, thinking of anything but getting killed, and they are anything but dazed. If they happen to think at all about anybody being killed, they do so as in ordinary life—and death: they reckon on their neighbours dying, but not on themselves.
There is naturally a sort of excitement which takes possession of one, and which, I think, works on you to the same extent as a couple of glasses of champagne. You forget all fatigue, and your wits are more than usually sharpened.
This brightening of the wits is similar to that which occurs in the case of an actor on the stage. Ask him in the wings, just before he goes on, what are his next few lines, and he probably could not tell you: he steps before the footlights, and at that same moment his mind, I suppose, concentrates itself on the matter in hand, the lines come to him without effort of memory, and his wits are about him to the extent that if one of the “gods” interrupts with a bit of chaff, the actor can rap back a repartee at him that would take him a month to work out in cold blood. In the same way, one’s wits brighten in a fight: one seems to see clearly in every direction at once, to grasp what the enemy is at, and also what is wanted on one’s own side, before, around, and behind one. The mind is clear and not confused, and is buoyed with a feeling of elation and cheery excitement, but with a cruel under–current, close below the surface, which the Kaffirs so aptly describe as “seeing red.”
A little instance in a fight two days ago will illustrate my meaning. A trooper coming back from the firing line with a message to the rear, saw, as he passed, one of our Cape Boys skulking under cover behind a rock. “For’ard on, Alexander!” he shouted cheerily, and picked up a stone to playfully enforce his command. At this moment a Matabele in a cave close by fired and just missed him; he merely altered the direction and the force of his throw, and hurled the stone hard at the cave instead of at the Cape Boy. Then with eager haste, mad with rage, and swearing volubly, he dashed up the rocks to “give the nigger snuff.”
This sudden change from cheery light–heartedness to blood–thirsting rage is one of the peculiarities of the mind during a fight.
Another curious statement in the article is that in action fear plays some game with one’s secretion of saliva, and that an intense thirst results. Speaking for myself, I have been in as great a funk as any man of my weight and years; but I do not recollect any particular thirst connected with it. I have for my part never seen much difference between the thirst of the battlefield and that of the polo–field, the cricket–field, or any other field, except perhaps one, the pig–sticking field, which certainly can produce a thirst peculiarly its own, and one which transcends that of any other pursuit—but even that thirst is not the result of fear.
