they turned abruptly to the left, that is to say, southwards, and the
Aisne disappeared in a cleft of the hills. Winding tortuously at the
feet of more or less steep slopes--for the country was quite
changed--progress was not as easy as it had been. At last, close on
seven o'clock, a halt was made on a hillside.

Men fell to the ground with a grunt, thanking God that another of those
Hell-days was over. Too tired to move, even if the position was an
uncomfortable one; too tired to pray for rest; too tired to think!

The average man is, I am sure, quite ignorant of the effect which
extreme exhaustion has on the brain. As the weary hours drag by, it
seems as if a deadness, a sort of paralysis, creeps up the limbs,
upwards towards the head. The bones of the feet ache with a very
positive pain. It needs a concentration of mind that a stupefied brain
can ill afford to give to force the knees to keep from doubling under
the weight of the body. The hands feel as if they were swelling until
the boiling blood would ooze from the finger-tips. The lungs seem too
exhausted to expand; the neck too weary to support the heavy head. The
shoulders ache under the galling weight of sword and haversack, and
every inch of clammy skin on the body seems ten times as sensitive as it
normally is. The nerves in the face and hands feel like swelled veins
that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails. The tongue and eyes
seem to expand to twice their usual size. Sound itself loses its sharp
conciseness, and reaches the brain only as a blurred and indistinct
impression.

But perhaps the reader may say that he has once done twenty-five or
thirty miles in a day, and did not feel half as bad as that. He must
remember, however, that these men had been doing over twenty-five miles