"Oh, we're all getting better, much better; we'll be out of here in a
few months; they all get better; 90 per cent of us get back in the
trenches."

And that is the silver lining to this Silhouette Spiritual. The
doctors say that a very large percentage of them get back.

"We call ourselves the 'First American Shock Troops,'" my friend from
the West said with a grin.

"I guess you are 'shock troops,' all right. I know one thing, and that
is that you would give your folks back home a good shock if they saw
you."

Then we all laughed. Laughter was in the air. I have never met
anywhere in France such a happy, hopeful, cheerful crowd as that bunch
of shell-shocked boys. It was contagious. I went there to cheer them
up, and I got cheered up. I went there to give them strength, and came
away stronger than when I went in. It would cheer the hearts of all
Americans to take a peep into that room; if they could see the souls
back of the trembling bodies; if they could get beyond the first shock
of those trembling bodies and stuttering tongues. And, after all, that
is what America must learn to do, to get beyond, and to see beyond, the
wounds, into the soul of the boy; to see beyond the blinded eyes, the
scarred faces, the legless and armless lads, into the glory of their
new-born souls, for no boy goes through the hell of fire and suffering
and wounds that he does not come out new-born. The old man is gone
from him, and a new man is born in him. That is the great eternal
compensation of war and suffering.