After a little experience of campaigning in France a young officer wrote, "I tried to like war, having heard and read so many fine things about it, but I could not; it is just beastly." Any one who talks of the glory of war should be invited to walk over a battle field when the fighting has ceased. He will see those who have "got it" from shells or bullets writhing in agony, he will hear many of them asking someone for the love of God to kill them and put them out of their misery. A member of the Royal Army Medical Corps gives the following vivid picture of a battlefield after the guns had ceased firing: "The last fight I was in the carnage had been fearful, and dead and dying of both sides were piled together. In one corner you could see a British Tommy with a bad wound lying with his head pillowed on the shoulder of a dying German, while a Frenchman near by was doing his best to cheer them up, and emptying his pockets in quest of some treasures to soothe the last moments of the other two. Close by a British Guardsman was propped against a tree smoking a cigarette and gazing intently at a photograph. Near to him was a wounded Frenchman, holding a little glass in one hand while he tried to curl a straggling moustache with the other. Further along I saw two men, a French artilleryman and a British rifleman, quietly playing cards while awaiting their turn to be taken to hospital. Next to them was a man of the Cameron Highlanders, with both legs shattered, munching a stick of chocolate, and trying to hide the twitching of his face as the pain racked his body. I approached another Highlander. 'It's ma birthday the day,' was what he said, with a wry face, and before the words were right out of his mouth he was dead. Under a little cluster of trees we find a party of wounded Germans, English, and French men. They were quietly praying for what they believed to be the last time on earth. Beyond them a Seaforth Highlander was lying with his Testament open at the story of the Crucifixion. He was beyond human aid." How much more than "beastly" for the wounded must be the waiting for the stretcher-bearers to pick them up and the fear that they may not be able to come or that they may not find them? What torture for the mind there is in the uncertainty! The next time we are impatient because a train is unpunctual or the dinner a few moments late, we should think of those who wait on battlefields, sometimes in danger of getting more wounds and sometimes exposed to great cold and falling rain or snow. CHAPTER XIV From Fear to Heroism A common topic in letters from the front is the feeling of the writers on going into battle. They were "half mad with excitement"; they "did not know what they were doing"; they felt "hot and cold, and, as it were, stuck to the ground." One remarks, "If anyone tells you that he is not afraid in his first battle, you may be sure that he is a liar."