underneath. Still there was all the difference between rehearsal
and the actual going on the stage.

"When we crawled in through the trapdoor for the first time over,
the shut-up feeling got me. I'd felt it before but not that way. I
got to imagining what would happen if we got stalled somewhere in
the Boche lines, and they built a fire around us. That was natural,
because it's hot inside a tank at the best. You mustn't smoke
either. I hadn't minded that in rehearsal, but in action I was
crazy for a fag.

"We went across, you remember, at eleven, and the sun was shining
bright. We were parboiled before we started, and when we got going
good it was like a Turkish bath. I was stripped to the waist and
was dripping. Besides that, when we begun to give 'em hell, the
place filled with gas, and it was stifling. The old boat pitched a
good deal going into shell holes, and it was all a man could do to
keep his station. I put my nose up to my loop-hole to get air, but
only once. The machine-gun bullets were simply rattling on our
hide. Tock, tock, tock they kept drumming. The first shell that hit
us must have been head on and a direct hit. There was a terrific
crash, and the old girl shook all over,--seemed to pause a little
even. But no harm was done. After that we breathed easier. We
hadn't been quite sure that the Boche shells wouldn't do us in.

"By the time we got to the Boche trenches, we knew he hadn't
anything that could hurt us. We just sat and raked him and laughed
and wished it was over, so we could get the air."

I had already seen the effect of the tanks on the Germans. The