It was nearing Christmas when I met Capt. Corcoran. He is a genial and, I felt sure, a rather sentimental soul; but his matter-of-fact conversation about matter-of-fact human slaughter was altogether chilling. So I asked him about Christmas in the trenches. "I spent last Christmas at Loos," he said. Loos, one of the worst of slaughter pens! I grew expectant. "I was sapping," he said. "Part of an engineer's duties are the extension of deep underground passages toward the enemy's lines, laying mines under 'No Man's Land' and listening, if possible, for signs of activity on the other side. "I was sapping--Christmas Eve. We were down thirty-five feet, in a little cave about nine by four. There were three of us. Along toward midnight a big shell landed right, and we were buried. We were buried thirteen hours. One of the boys lost his mind, but they dug us out Christmas afternoon." "It wouldn't have been so bad," he added, "if we had only had to wait. But we could hear the Boche sapping just a few feet away and we hated like everything to be mined and blown up down there. You don't mind it when you're out in the open air, but you get nervous in a fix like that." "It must have been a merry Christmas after all--just to get out," I remarked. "No," he said. "Something happened that got on my nerves. I went as soon as I could to get my Christmas mail--wanted to see what Santa Claus had brought--and he didn't bring me a blessed thing but a bill for thirty pounds." * * * * * I have hoped for a reaction against war on the part of the troops--a psychological revulsion, in time, against the long-drawn-out killing. I tried to present my theory to the captain, but he didn't seem to grasp it. "Everybody's nervous," he said, "for the first day or two--like a horse just in from the quiet country being driven through your city streets. But, sure, if he was going to shy at the 'Elevated,' he'd do it the first week. After that, he gets used to the noise and he'd be nervous without it. 'Tis so with a soldier. He's glad to get wounded for a change, and be sent back home; but then he gets to missing the noise of the whizz-bangs and the coal boxes and the darling little sausages, and he isn't easy until he gets into the game again." "But the horrors of hand-to-hand fighting," I protested. "How can anybody go through that and come out sane?" "'Tis simple," he said. "You know you've got to get your man, or he'll get you." "Get him? How?" "With whatever you've got. Maybe your bayonet. Maybe your knife. Maybe nothing but your fists and teeth."