“At our pits,” I said, “we have one uniform rule of procedure. When a bombardment begins, the men go to their guns. I take my stand on top of the magazine mound to watch the enemy’s fire and direct our own. If I see that a mortar shell is about to fall into one of the gun pits, I call out the pit number, and the men run into the bomb-proof until the explosion is over. No man ever goes into a bomb-proof till this order is given. You must do as the rest do. If you run to a bomb-proof before I have given the order, it will be my imperative duty to shoot you then and there; and I shall certainly discharge that duty. Do you fully understand that, Si?” He thought he did, and as the sharp-shooters were by this time becoming pestilently personal in their attentions, we resumed our walk. Half an hour after our arrival at Fort Lamkin, a bombardment began. I didn’t want to shoot that boy. I distinctly preferred to make a soldier rather than a “stiff” out of him. So, instead of taking my customary stand on the mound of earth over the magazine, I ordered Joe to that post, and placed myself in the gun pit to which Si Tucker had been assigned, taking care to stand between him and the mouth of the bomb-proof. I spoke to him as I passed. “Remember what I told you. If you forget, it is instant death.” He remembered. For nearly two hours he stood there quaking and quivering, but not daring to seek safety by retreat to a bomb-proof. By the time that the outburst was over, Si Tucker had learned his first lesson in war. He had learned to realize that a man may endure a lot of very savage fire, and yet come out of it alive. A few hours later, when the guns were at work again, Si was steady enough in his nerves to carry shells to the guns. The next day he was even able during a bombardment to cut fuses--a delicate operation requiring a steady hand. Within two or three days he had become as good a soldier as we had in all that band of men specially picked for their unflinching courage. When the great mine explosion occurred a few weeks later, I had occasion to rebuke Si Tucker for a fault quite unrelated to cowardice. We had been ordered to go with our mortars as near as possible to the crater, and to drop a continual rain of shells among the thousands of helpless fellows in that awful pit. It was cruel, ghastly work. But it was war. And a poet has justly characterized war as a “brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art.” Or as General Sherman once said,--and he knew,--“War is all hell.”