"I say," barked the doctor, "speak up. What's wrong?"

Bealer was startled and jumped and begun to stutter.

"Oh, I see," said the surgeon. "Shell shock."

Bealer was bright enough and quick enough after that to play it up
and was tagged for Blighty. He had it thrust upon him. And you can
bet he grabbed it and thanked his lucky stars.

We had been on Mill Street a day and a night when an order came for
our company to move up to the second line and to be ready to go
over the top the next day. At first there was the usual grousing,
as there seemed to be no reason why our company should be picked
from the whole battalion. We soon learned that all hands were going
over, and after that we felt better.

We got our equipment on and started up to the second line. It was
right here that I got my first dose of real honest-to-goodness
modern war. The big push had been on all summer, and the whole of
the Somme district was battered and smashed.

Going up from Mill Street there were no communication trenches. We
were right out in the open, exposed to rifle and machine-gun fire
and to shrapnel, and the Boches were fairly raining it in on the
territory they had been pushed back from and of which they had the
range to an inch. We went up under that steady fire for a full
hour. The casualties were heavy, and the galling part of it was
that we couldn't hurry, it was so dark. Every time a shell burst
overhead and the shrapnel pattered in the dirt all about, I kissed