How much more than "beastly" for the wounded must be the waiting for the stretcher-bearers to pick them up and the fear that they may not be able to come or that they may not find them? What torture for the mind there is in the uncertainty!
The next time we are impatient because a train is unpunctual or the dinner a few moments late, we should think of those who wait on battlefields, sometimes in danger of getting more wounds and sometimes exposed to great cold and falling rain or snow.
[CHAPTER XIV]
From Fear to Heroism
A common topic in letters from the front is the feeling of the writers on going into battle. They were "half mad with excitement"; they "did not know what they were doing"; they felt "hot and cold, and, as it were, stuck to the ground." One remarks, "If anyone tells you that he is not afraid in his first battle, you may be sure that he is a liar."
In a ball-room a girl was overheard asking an officer, who has shown himself brave above the average, what he felt when he went into his first engagement. "My dear young lady," he replied, "I felt like making for the nearest hedge that would hide me comfortably."
The South African soldier and statesman, Louis Botha, was asked what it was like to be on a field of battle, and whether men rise to the occasion. "That depends," he said "on the spirit of the man."
Speaking of the science of slaughter, of which the present war has been an exhibition, a soldier remarked: "I don't believe there is a man living who, when first interviewing an 11in. howitzer shell, is not pink with funk. After the first ten, one gets quite used to them, but really, they are terrible!"