fairly rapid, and the German "Black Marias" soon exhaust their terrors.
A man may lose his memory and have but a hazy idea of the day of the
week or the hour of the day, but Tommy still keeps his nerve, and after
his first experience of the enemy's fire, to quote his own words,
"doesn't care one d---- about the danger."

As showing the general feeling of the educated soldier, independent
altogether of his nationality, it is worth quoting two other
experiences, both Russian. Mr. Stephen Graham in the _Times_ recites the
sensations of a young Russian officer. "The feeling under fire at first
is unpleasant," he admits, "but after a while it becomes even
exhilarating. One feels an extraordinary freedom in the midst of death."
The following is a quotation from a soldier's letter sent by Mr. H.
Williams, the _Daily Chronicle_ correspondent at Petrograd: "One talks
of hell fire on the battlefield, but I assure you it makes no more
impression on me now than the tooting of motors. Habit is everything,
especially in war, where all the logic and psychology of one's actions
are the exact reverse of a civilian's.... The whole sensation of fear is
atrophied. We don't care a farthing for our lives.... We don't think of
danger. In this new frame of mind we simply go and do the perfectly
normal, natural things that you call heroism."

When the heroic things are done and there comes a lull in the fighting,
it is sweet to sink down in the trenches worn out, exhausted, unutterly
drowsy, and snatch a brief unconscious hour of sleep. Some of the men
fall asleep with the rifles still hot in their hands, their heads
resting on the barrels. Magnificently as they endure fatigue, there
comes a time when the strain is intolerable, and, "beat to the world,"
as one officer describes it, they often sink into profound sleep, like
horses, standing. At these times it seems as if nothing could wake them.