One night we were lying quietly in some woods when we heard the rattle of hoofs all along the road making enough noise to wake the whole dead in all the graveyards of the world. There was a regiment of the Kaiser’s pets, the Uhlans, coming along as lively as larks on a summer morning. We waited for them at the bend of the road, just close to the cemetery, and when we crashed into them I think they imagined we were ghosts. Very tough we were, to be sure, and a ghost that feels for your ribs with a lance at midnight is an ugly customer to deal with. Those chaps didn’t half howl with rage and fear when we went into them, and as soon as they could turn their horses they were off down the road like blue murder. We captured half of them, and cut up the rest: _Sergt. Diamond, of the Lancers_. Blue with Lead There is no doubt about the personal bravery of the Germans. I saw a file of them coming down a slight hillock, and twenty or so were hit and toppled down over each other, exactly the same as ninepins. The wonderful thing is that any of us came out of it alive. As I looked up from the trenches, the sky was blue with flying lead. After the fighting had gone on for five hours a bullet passed through the lobe of my left ear, and, after scarring the back of my neck, tore a piece off my coat collar, which was up at the time. The same bullet killed the man behind me. I felt myself growing faint, and gave my name and the name of my mother to my mate next to me, and then I seem to have fainted. When I recovered consciousness my mate was dead: _A Sergeant of the South Lancashire Regiment_. Don’t Mind! It was butchers’ work. We just rained shells on the German gunners until we were deaf and choking. I don’t think a gun on the position could have been sold for scrap iron after we had finished, and the German gunners would be just odd pieces of clothing and bits of accoutrement. It seems swanky to say so, but once you get over the first shock you’ll go on chewing biscuits or tobacco when the shells are bursting all round. You don’t seem to mind it any more than smoking in a hailstorm. Then you get pulled up with a jerk when your mate on the left curls up in a heap. War is rotten, but you can even get used to working in a candle-factory. We hated smells more than we did the Germans: _An Artilleryman_. Not Much Left