But I am getting ahead of my story. The colonel, lying back on his cot with his head on a canvas pillow and his muddied legs crossed, said at the conclusion of his account:
“Well, we failed to bag any live game, but anyhow our boys behaved splendidly. They went over the top cheering and they came back in singing. You'd never have guessed they were green hands at this game or that this was the first time they had ever crossed No Man's Land.”
To the truth of a part of what he said I could testify personally, for late that afternoon I had seen the squad marching forward to the spot where they were to line up for the sally later. They had been like schoolboys on a lark. If any one of them was afraid he refused to betray it; if any one of them was nervous at the prospect before him he hid his nervousness splendidly well. Only, from them as they passed us, they radiated a great pride in having been chosen for the job, and a great confidence in its outcome, and a great joy that to them thus early in their soldiering had come the coveted chance to show the stuff that was in them. And while they passed, our friend the major, standing alongside watching them go by, had said with all the fervency of a man uttering a prayer:
“By Jove, aren't they bully! No officer could ask for finer men than that for his outfit. But they're leaving oodles of disappointment behind them at that.”
“I'll tell you how,” he said: “Yesterday when the scheme for this thing was completed we were told that forty-five men out of our regiment were to be allowed to take part in tonight's doings. That meant fifteen men out of each battalion. So yesterday evening at parade I broke the glad tidings to my battalion and called for volunteers, first warning the men as a matter of routine that the work would be highly dangerous and no man need feel called upon to offer himself. Do you want to know how many men out of that battalion volunteered? Every single solitary last dog-goned one of them, that's all! They came at me like one man. So to save as much heartburning as possible I left the choice of fifteen out of nearly a thousand to the top sergeants of the companies. And in all your life you never saw fifteen fellows so tickled as the fifteen who were selected, and you never saw nine hundred and odd so downhearted as the lot who failed to get on the list.