"I tried to follow the course of every shell. My head was continually twisting. I jumped at every explosion. I could not control the muscles of my back and shoulders. But I stepped out of the line and walked a little way into the field, toward the shells. I wanted to see if I could do it. I got close enough so that I could hear a piece of shell whiz past my ear. Then I waited for another piece. It was a hard job, but I waited, leaning on my rifle and looking at the ground a little way in front of me, where the last shell had exploded. If I had moved my eyes from that spot I could not have stayed. Not until the third one came did I hear another piece of shell. The others had struck too far to one side.
"'Now I can go back,' I said to myself. But I walked very fast going back.
"In the boyau it was not so bad. A French avion had come up and chased away the Boche.
"I thought of the things I had done and hoped that having done them once I could do them again. But I was not sure. I was afraid. I knew that. I have always been afraid, and there has always been the question in my mind if my fear would conquer or if I would conquer my fear.
"There was the time when it became necessary to take a message from our support trenches to our advanced lines in the Bois des Corbeaux. There was a tir de barrage to be crossed and volunteers were called for. I was chosen.
"By that time I had formed the theory that a man can do anything if his duty demands it of him and he will keep that in his mind. It was a part of the thought that came to me that first day in the boyau and I developed it later in the long nights. The first day I had no really coherent thoughts, only a great fear of my own fear. Afterward I found that I could control it, if there was a reason. And then I found that the reason was France.
"Of course, you may say that it was France that made me volunteer, but I do not think so. I think it was shame—shame that I feared to go when others went. With all the good reasons that I had for not going, with the doctor's word, I knew, nevertheless, it was fear that kept me back. It was because I could not tell the truth to my wife and friends and neighbours that I went.
"Only afterward did I find out that a great duty will take a man any place with a calm mind. I stood against German attacks. I was in counter attacks. I lay out in shell holes, helping to hold a line where there were no trenches. I never forgot my fear, but I thought of France, my country, my duty; and though I shivered and the cold sweat rolled off me, I held steady.
"Have you ever seen a tir de barrage? You can walk up to it and draw a line with a surveyor's chain on the ground, marking exactly the limit where the shells fall, and all beyond that line will be a mass of boiling earth, like waves in a storm dashing on a rocky coast. There is no interval between the explosions. They are constant, unremitting, one following so closely on another that their detonations mingle in a steady roar."
V—"I DASHED FORWARD INTO EXPLODING SHELLS"