_THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: THE GOOD WORD._ BY BOYD CABLE. It is quite inadequate to say that the troops were worn out, and indeed it is hard to find words to convey to anyone who has not experienced some days of a mixture of fighting and forced marching how utterly exhausted, how dead beat, how stupefied and numbed in mind and body the men were. For four days and nights they had fought and dug trenches and marched, and fought again, and halted to dig again, and fought again, and extricated themselves under hailing bullets and pouring shells from positions they never expected to leave alive, only to scramble together into some sort of ragged-shaped units and march again. And all this was under a fierce August sun, with irregular meals and sometimes no meals, at odd times with a scarcity or complete want of water, at all times with a burning lack and want of sleep. This want of sleep was the worst of it all. Any sort of fighting is heavy sleep inducing; when it is prolonged for days and nights without one good full, satisfying sleep, the desire for rest becomes a craving, an all-absorbing aching passion. At first a man wants a bed or space to lie down and stretch his limbs and pillow his head and sink into dreamless oblivion; at last he would give his last possession merely to be allowed to lean against a wall, to stand upright on his feet and close his eyes. To keep awake is torture, to lift and move each foot is a desperate effort, to keep the burning eyes open and seeing an agony. It takes the most tremendous effort of will to contemplate another five minutes of wakefulness, another hundred yards to be covered; and here were hours, endless hours, of wakefulness, miles and tens of miles to be covered. Cruelly hard as the conditions were for the whole retreating army, the rear-guard suffered the worst by a good deal. They were under the constant threat of attack, were halted every now and then under that threat or to allow the main body to keep a sufficient distance, had to make some attempt to dig in again, had to endure spasmodic shelling either in their shallow trenches or as they marched along the road.