Expeditionary Force has been proved to possess in so rich a measure, and
which must belong to all good soldiers in these days of nerve-shattering
war.

Little touches of pathos are not wanting in the scenes pictured in the
soldiers' letters, and they bring an element of humanity into the cold,
well-ordered, practical business of war. Men who will meet any personal
danger without flinching often find the mists floating across their eyes
when a comrade is struck down at their side. Private Plant, Manchester
Regiment, tells how his pal was eating a bit of bread and cheese when he
was knocked over: "Poor chap, he just managed to ask me to tell his
missus." "War is rotten when you see your best pal curl up at your
feet," comments another. "One of our chaps got hit in the face with a
shrapnel bullet," Private Sidney Smith, First Warwickshires, relates.
"'Hurt, Bill?' I said to him. 'Good luck to the old regiment,' says he.
Then he rolled over on his back." "Partings of this kind are sad
enough," says an Irish Dragoon, "but we've just got to sigh and get used
to it."

Their own injuries and sufferings don't seem to worry them much. The
sensation of getting wounded is simply told. One man, shot through the
arm, felt "only a bit of a sting, nothing particular. Just like a sharp
needle going into me. I thought it was nothing till my rifle dropped out
of my hand, and my arm fell. Rotten luck." That is the feeling of a
clean bullet wound. Shrapnel, however, hurts--"hurts pretty badly,"
Tommy says. And the lance and the bayonet make ugly gashes. In sensitive
men, however, the continuous shell-fire produces effects that are often
as serious as wounds. "Some," says Mr. Geoffrey Young, the _Daily News
and Leader_ correspondent, "suffer from a curious aphasia, some get
dazed and speechless, some deafened"; but of course their recovery is