“ Such, with the addition of ear-splitting coo-ees, wild bush oaths, and a running fire of blasphemy and unearthly cat-calls were the battle cries of the men from Down Under as they drove the enemy out of his trenches and up the hill, through the scrub, over dongas and gullies, right to the base of the sheer cliff itself, up which finally, all mixed together and sliding, crawling, and clinging like monkeys, scrambled pursuer and pursued in one loosely strung mob of panting, war-drunken men. ”

“ Mingling with the roar of the artillery and the clitter-clatter of the machine guns and the sharp snap of the rifles were the hoarse cries of the half maddened Bulgars, whose officers ever drove them on to the death that came quick and hot from the British trenches. Men of splendid physique they were that faced our hail of lead, cheering in a sort of wild euthanasia of battle, with bugles and trumpets blowing defiant challenge as in the knightly days of the tourney. ”

“ It is a noisy brute but some naval guns over a mile away are quite deafening even at that distance. The expression "tearing the atmosphere" really applies to the scream of their shells as they pass overhead. They do sound like tearing silk heard through a stethoscope. The prettiest sound of the night is a machine-gun a mile or so to our right firing short tap tap tap tap taps like an over-grown woodpecker. Understand that these sounds are only occasional only the scattered rifle fire being anything like continuous, and that so scattered that it is a mere background. ”

“ The cold increases. It is that hour when, the battle ended, the wounded who have not yet been brought in, cry aloud in their suffering and distress. And those calls, those appealings, those moanings, awaken anguish in all those compelled to listen to them; an anguish the crueler for the fighters who are chained to their posts by stern duty yet who long to rush out to their gasping comrades, to dress their wounds, to speak words of comfort to them, and to carry them to safety where fires burn brightly and warm. ”

“ Grey carts, carts, carts. Horses, horses, horses, fugitives wandering like shadows, horses, children's coffins, and again horses, horses, horses. The head turns giddy looking at the endless movement. It becomes difficult to breathe because of that which passes before the eyes.
In this little town through which comes such an ocean of people, it is as quiet as if it were all one great funeral. I had hardly come into the market-place before the crowd swirled round me with quick movements and feverish eyes. Whence had they come to Roslavl? ”

“ Sometimes there would be a rush of men outside the window, and I would look to see if the pale grey uniform was there or if khaki still held the place. Every now and then a shower of shrapnel struck the roof of the cottage, and tiles went rattling to the road. All the while a section of our artillery fired incessantly. How gallant those guns of ours sound—Boom-boom-boom. They were fighting to their last shell. If the village went, they went with it. No horses could be brought up to draw them away in such an inferno. ”

“ There were one hundred of us—fifty on a side—but we turned the heavens into a hell, up in the air there, more terrible than ten thousand devils could have made running rampant in the pit.
The sky blazed and crackled with bursting time bombs, and the machine guns spitted out their steel venom, while underneath us hung what seemed like a net of fire, where shells from the Archies, vainly trying to reach us, were bursting. ”

“ They freeze, get ill, watch their children die, and wait. It's not possible to breathe. All around is human filth. In certain stinking horrible ponds, the peasant women with feet blue from the cold, are washing clothes. And these ponds also are tainted with filth....
And when I come here in the morning, whilst the ground all around is covered with hoar-frost and the half-expired bonfires glimmer beside the marsh on which the camp is set, the spectacle is dreadful. How reckon up the sufferings? It's no use even thinking of going across the station platform. ”

“ I have known scores of Russian generals since the beginning of the war, and have written a good deal about the men at the greater staffs who play the intellectual end of the game in their distant offices, but, I think, far too little of the generals who sit in rough peasant cottages at the front, just behind the lines where the roar of the artillery and the rattle of the machine gun tells them of their troops in action even before the field telephone buzzes through its raucous message from the trenches. ”

“ They did not know, many of them, whether they were attacking French, British or Turk, but unquestioning, unthinking, they came on with a fearlessness of life deserving of a better cause, leaping into our trenches and falling back dead with a bullet in the throat or a bayonet wound in the breast or with head blown off by one of our shells.
But it was, "for all our grim resistance," a hopeless kind of struggle. Sooner or later that unceasing stream of men issuing out of the narrow defile must sweep us back. ”

“ At last the squadron commander took his place in his machine and rose with a whirr. The rest of us rose and circled round, getting our formation.
Crack! At the signal from the commander's pistol we darted forward, going ever higher and higher, while the cheers of the mechanicians and riggers grew fainter.
Across our own trenches we sailed and out over No Man's Land, like a huge, eyeless, pock-scarred earth face staring up at us. ”

“ Not one sergeant! Not even a corporal! All those squads which become after a time a well-beloved family to those in charge of them, a family not to be parted from without sorrow and regret—here they are deprived of their leaders, to whom they look up constantly, who watch over them, who sustain them through long and difficult hours by the mere magic of their presence. ”

“ It was dark when we left the transports off Gaba Tepe and crept in towards the denser blackness that represented the shore. The night—or early morning, rather—was still; everything seemed in our favor; not a sound welled out seaward, not a light twinkled in the murk ahead. Could it be that we had taken the Turks by surprise? Or were they simply lying low and playing a waiting game? Soon we were to know.
On—on crept the boats loaded to the gunwales with the citizen soldiers from the Dominions. ”

“ One's soul wants to feed on the sight of the brute Boches falling. I stopped on the ground for hours, and when I closed my eyes I saw the whole picture again. The guns are firing at 200 and 300 yards, and shrapnel is exploding with a crash, scything them down. Our men hold their ground; our machine guns keep to their work, and yet they advance.
Near me, as I lie in the mud, there is a giant wrapped in one of our uniforms with a steel helmet on his head. He seems to be dead, he is so absolutely still. ”

“ Next, one began to encounter the carts of heavily wounded, two in a cart lying on the straw, their eyes staring up into the misty morning sky, their expressions indifferent, stolid, and unemotional. Some clung to the sides of the carts to ease the jolting caused by the inequality of the way. Others lay as though dead, with blankets thrown over their faces. These sights, however, have become as common now as the mud of the road itself and hardly warrant description. ”

“ It was the Boche in his flight who dragged these sorry things to the side of the road, who arranged this horrid spectacle for our express benefit, and we must never rest until the brute has drunk our cup of vengeance to the dregs.
Impotent and childish is the fury that only inspires us with rage and the passion for vengeance instead of fear, as our foe hopes and believes.
Besides, every step forward now presents us with eloquent testimony of the completeness of the defeat they have suffered—helmets torn and pierced by our bullets, crushed and shattered by our shells ”

“ When you feel the invisible fingers of fate so close to your life, as on the battlefield, the problems that interest you before and the feelings that you experience in a peaceful feminine activity die out and a new view opens. It is not the feeling of sport, it is not the feeling of being killed, that takes hold of the mind of the battlefield, but it is a queer, dramatic hypnose, like an actor feels before opening a play. ”

“ Men fought that day stripped to the waist; fought till their rifles jammed, picked up another—and went on fighting. Men with broken legs refused to leave the trench, cursing those who would have assisted them—went on firing until a second bullet crippled their rifle arm. Yet still they clung on, handing up clips of cartridges to their mates, all the time imploring them to "give the sons of —— hell!" They weren't Sunday-school models, those big-hearted, happy-go-lucky toughs from the Back of Beyond. But they knew how to fight—and die. They were men right through, not kid-glove soldiers. ”

“ In Berlin, restaurants, cafés, theaters, and concerts are going at full blast. Donait, Iselin, and I, who have for months been working like dogs in Paris, which is as dull as a country village and where cafés close at eight and restaurants at nine and no places of amusement are open other than a few poor cinemas, are thoroughly enjoying the contrast....
People who one day read the announcement of the death of a son, a father, or a brother, are seen the next day in the streets or cafés going about quietly, expressing or betraying neither sorrow nor regret. ”

“ At the bonfires they warm their red and chilblained [56] hands. Horses pass through the crowd. With triangular brandings on their hind legs.
Many horses wander about lost. They come to the high-road, to the people, to the other horses. They wander about quietly, somehow helplessly, looking around them with their wise, sad eyes. As if they were seeking their own people. Horses at the last gasp of their strength. But no one pays any attention to them. Neither do the horses pay attention. They stumble upon people. ”

“ But march we did, marched endlessly, and most of the time on less than a pint of vile water and a dozen ounces of cooked rice a day. The country was one endless stretch of small round pebbles that ground the soles from our boots and the skin from our feet. We were always hungry, always thirsty, always footsore. The sun at noonday scorched us, the cold of the night chilled us. One day, to make matters worse, a man who was off his head from suffering ran away and evaded capture. ”

“ Indeed, it seems that on both sides the soldiers dread the women soldiers more than they do those of their own sex.
Kipling's "The female of the species is more deadly than the male," recalls itself, of course. Dr. Hans Hulduckson, writing of this same phenomenon, said:
"Women are not natural combatants. They do not rush into war for war's sake. They are without the blood lust that makes fighting a joy for fighting's sake. They will fight only in desperate straits, and then only for their honor, their children or the existence of their country. ”

“ Very intently the watchers listened, for the silence was ominous and foreshadowed an assault. After a few moments' suspense, Mullin's arm was touched by one of his companions. From across the stream the wind wafted to them the unmistakable sound of someone walking through the water. The three gripped their rifles in alarm. The Germans were coming! But nothing happened. They heard men breathing hard and straining at their work, and gradually the explanation dawned upon them. The disturbing noise was nothing worse than the enemy bailing water from their trenches into the stream! ”

“ But then we Americans fought that way at Lexington; any nation can fight that way when it is a thing of the heart; and this war is all of the heart in Germany. As we walked through the station gates I understood why three million Socialists [17] who had fought their Emperor in and out of the Reichstag, suddenly rallied to his side, agreeing "I know no parties, only Germans." I felt as I thought of the young faces of the soldiers, cheerfully starting down into the unknown hell of war, that undoubtedly among their number were Socialists. ”