admit with perfect frankness, "but the bayonet terrifies them, and they
cry out in agony at the sight of it."

Admittedly, it requires more than ordinary courage to face a bayonet
charge, just as it calls for a high order of valor to use that deadly
weapon. Instances are given of young soldiers experiencing a sinking
sensation, a feeling of collapse, at the order "Fix Bayonets!" their
hands trembling violently over the task. But when the bugle sounds the
charge, and the wild dash at the enemy's lines has begun, with the skirl
of the pipes to stir up the blood, the nerves stiffen and the hands grip
the rifle with grim determination. "It was his life or mine," said a
young Highlander describing his first battle, "and I ran the bayonet
through him." There is no time for sentiment, and there can be no
thought of chivalry. Just get the ugly business over and done with as
quickly as possible. One soldier tells what a sense of horror swept over
him when his bayonet stuck in his victim, and he had to use all his
strength to wrench it out of the body in time to tackle the next man.

Many men describe the effects of the British bayonet charges and the way
the Germans--Uhlans, Guards, and artillerymen--recoil from them. "If you
go near them with the bayonet they squeal like pigs," "they beg for
mercy on their knees," "the way they cringe before the bayonet is
pitiful"--such are examples of the hundreds of references to this method
of attack.

Private Whittaker, Coldstream Guards, gives a vivid account of the
fighting around Compiègne. "The Germans rushed at us," he writes, "like
a crowd streaming from a Cup-tie at the Crystal Palace. You could not
miss them. Our bullets plowed into them, but still on they came. I was
well entrenched, and my rifle got so hot I could hardly hold it. I was