didn't stop. I was frightfully nervous and scared, but tried not
to show it. An officer or a non-com must conceal his nervousness,
though he be dying with fright.

The faces of the men were hard-set and pale. Some of them looked
positively green. They smoked fag after fag, lighting the new ones
on the butts.

All through the bombardment Fritz was comparatively quiet. He was
saving all his for the time when we should come over. Probably,
too, he was holed up to a large extent in his concrete dug-outs. I
looked over the top once or twice and wondered if I, too, would be
lying there unburied with the rats and maggots gnawing me into an
unrecognizable mass. There were moments in that hour from ten to
eleven when I was distinctly sorry for myself.

The time, strangely enough, went fast--as it probably does with a
condemned man in his last hour. At zero minus ten the word went
down the line "Ten to go" and we got to the better positions of the
trench and secured our footing on the side of the parapet to make
our climb over when the signal came. Some of the men gave their
bayonets a last fond rub, and I looked to my bolt action to see
that it worked well. I had ten rounds in the magazine, and I didn't
intend to rely too much on the bayonet. At a few seconds of eleven
I looked at my wrist watch and was afflicted again with that empty
feeling in the solar plexus. Then the whistles shrilled; I blew
mine, and over we went.

To a disinterested spectator who was far enough up in the air to be
out of range it must have been a wonderful spectacle to see those