Half a dozen men are taking comfort in the shelter of a dugout. The next instant, five are one hundred feet in air, snuffed out, torn into atoms. But one is left, staring, mouth open. The others, swift arrivals at Kingdom Come, went so quickly into the great Beyond, they never knew or felt the shock. So with the rum ration low and the water high, the morning bright in sunlight, surroundings dark with death, one’s thoughts spring from the mind. Words fill the mouth. One grasps his pencil to catch burning impressions that flood his brain. He might as well try to tell his grandmother how to raise babies as to think straight! He reaches out and connects up, apparently isolated, strings of thought. He links a chain of circumstance bearing on destruction’s delirious delusions that now rocks the foundations of the world, which reacts on and affects every civilization, person, and individual on earth. He looks at things from an angle different from that of the civilian. He has a new conception of life. He is not the same person he was before the war. No longer does he smell the flowers, eat the fruit, or dwell in the home of civilization. He has lived, like a beast, in a hole in the ground, and slept in a seeping dugout with the rats and the lice. He has seen his companion go over the top, killed off, like germs, changed from a human comrade into a clod. He has lived long between two earthen walls, the blue sky above, a comrade on each side, with Fritz across the way. It was a narrow prospect. His point of view was limited; but he knew, that while apparently alone, he and his comrades were links in that strong, continuous chain of men who keep back the enemies of Freedom. Behind that chain are others, bracing, reinforcing,—artillery, infantry, aviators, reserves, money, provisions and ammunition, flocking to his aid from America, from Great Britain, from the uttermost parts. Those larger operations in the rear affect him but indirectly. The details in front are of vital interest. They mean life or death. Every alteration in the landscape demands closest investigation. Boys do not play, nor old women gabble, in No-Man’s-Land. Nothing is done without a reason, and, for every change, there is a cause. An unusual piece of cloth or paper is scrutinized by a hundred men, while a suspicious movement empties their guns. The soldier acquires the habit of noticing little things. He sees a small, starved flower, struggling for sunshine and strength, alongside the trench. He wonders why it chose such an inhospitable home. Next day, there is no flower, no trench—just an immense, gaping hole in the torn ground.