their nerves. But they made a special request that I come to visit
them in their ward. After the service I went. I reached their ward
about nine, and they arose to greet me. The nurse told me that they
were more at ease on their feet than lying down, and so for two hours
we stood and talked on our feet.

"How did you get yours?" I asked a little black-eyed New Yorker.

"I was in a front-line trench with my 'outfit,' down near Amiens," he
said. "We were having a pretty warm scrap. I was firing a machine-gun
so fast that it was red-hot. I was afraid it would melt down, and I
would be up against it. They were coming over in droves, and we were
mowing them down so fast that out in front of our company they looked
like stacks of hay, the dead Germans piled up everywhere. I was so
busy firing my gun, and watching it so carefully because it was so hot,
that I didn't hear the shell that suddenly burst behind me. If I had
heard it coming it would never have shocked me."

"If you hear them coming you're all right?" I asked.

"Yes. It's the ones that surprise you that give you shell-shock. If
you hear the whine you're ready for them; but if your mind is on
something else, as mine was that day, and the thing bursts close, it
either kills you or gives you shell-shock, so it gets you both going
and coming." He laughed at this.

"I was all right for a while after the thing fell, for I was
unconscious for a half-hour. When I came to I began to shake, and I've
been shaking ever since."