I have mentioned the situation of the 27th Division from October 17th to 21st, 1918, how they entered the attack with depleted numbers, tired in body and mind, after insufficient rest and with no fresh replacements. Day after day their dearest wish was that their relief might come and they might enjoy the often promised rest. They had seen their comrades killed and wounded until a regiment had only the normal number of men to equip a company. Yet day after day the orders came for an advance, and every day those tired boys advanced. They did what we all considered impossible because they had the morale of good fighting men. They bore the ever-present danger of bursting shells and the sniper's bullet with boyish daring and constant success. They labored harder than any worker in civilian life, sleeping in the rain, marching, carrying their heavy rifles and packs made mercifully light for the occasion, digging in the clinging clay of the Somme valley. This, too, they did not gladly, often not willingly, but because it was part of the game, and they were good sportsmen and would see it through. The peril to morale at the front was nerves. Although it may be hard to conceive, the dashing, aggressive soldiers might fall before this danger. Aggravated cases, true neuroses, we called "shell shock," slighter ones, "nerves," but the two were the same. The constant noise, exertion, hard work, loss of sleep, undernourishment, produced a peculiar mental state. Above all, the high nervous tension which was necessary for men to persist in these conditions had its dangers, too. By reason of it the wounded were able to bear more than their ordinary share of suffering, so that we saw constant examples of stoicism at the front. But when the excitement and tension wore off its effect was lost, and in base hospitals the soldiers were no better patients than young men in civilian life. When overburdened nerves gave way, the soldier was completely lost. A chaplain has told me of a long night spent with a patrol in front of the lines, not talking with the men but instead trying to hold the top sergeant to his post. The sergeant was a fine soldier, with a splendid record all through the Meuse-Argonne campaign, but that night, in the long vigil, his nerves had given way and the big, stolid soldier was trembling with fear. Only constant persuasion and the threat of force held him to his duty, and the next day he had to be assigned to work as supply sergeant in order to save the nightly patrol from panic that would certainly come if the non-com. in command failed them.