"Only afterward did I find out that a great duty will take a man any place with a calm mind. I stood against German attacks. I was in counter attacks. I lay out in shell holes, helping to hold a line where there were no trenches. I never forgot my fear, but I thought of France, my country, my duty; and though I shivered and the cold sweat rolled off me, I held steady. "Have you ever seen a _tir de barrage_? You can walk up to it and draw a line with a surveyor's chain on the ground, marking exactly the limit where the shells fall, and all beyond that line will be a mass of boiling earth, like waves in a storm dashing on a rocky coast. There is no interval between the explosions. They are constant, unremitting, one following so closely on another that their detonations mingle in a steady roar." V--"I DASHED FORWARD INTO EXPLODING SHELLS" "I came within fifty yards of the _tir de barrage_ and stopped to watch it and try to mark out a path. But no path was possible. No sooner was one chosen than it was wiped out, all the little landmarks gone, the whole face of the ground changed by a new rain of shells. My heart sank. My stomach went suddenly empty. I knew that I had reached the limit beyond which I could not go. I had found the point where my fear was greater than my duty. I lay flat down on the earth. I do not know how long I lay. I thought of nothing. There was only a horrible blank fear. "And then I found that unconsciously, not knowing it, I was digging my fingers into the ground, clutching the roots of grass and dragging myself into the _tir de barrage_. I might as well have been dragging myself the other way, but I had lain down with my face toward my duty. "When I made that discovery I got to my feet and stood upright for a second, not more, only time to say, 'I must not give myself time to think,' and dashed forward into the exploding shells. Such a race as that is like the last steps of a dying horse, one that has broken a blood vessel, straining for the wire, and plunges on his face in the midst of his stride. I floundered blindly into the raw earth and fell again on my face. But this time my mind was working. There was only one thing for me to do, and I knew it. That was to go on. I crawled forward on my hands and knees. I could not stand. It would be certain death. Twenty times I was knocked flat, my wind gone, by the explosion of a shell almost beside me. But I crawled on. I did not know if I had been hit. I thought I had. Two hundred yards I crawled through the _tir de barrage_ and then I got to our lines. They gave me the _Medaille Militaire_ for that. "You asked me why I smiled when you came up to us in the trench. I was wondering what you had to take you through the shells. I thought of my own struggles. I wondered if you had any of the thoughts that have crowded in on me under fire. And I smiled."