Five minutes later we were all distributed at the bottoms of various deep shelters. The shells had begun to fall on the section of trench where we were, and we had been ordered underground. I had descended eighteen steep steps, a matter of twenty feet, and found myself in a little, low celled, earth walled, square chamber, with six bunks in double tiers taking up three sides and the narrow door in the fourth side. The bearded soldier was in our party. He had preceded me and lent me a helping hand down the ladder-like stairs. When we were safe in the cave he lighted a candle and pulled up an empty shell box for me to sit on.
"That is all right," I replied. "I want to know why you smiled at us when we came up. We had come across pretty dangerous ground."
"I know you had," he said. "That was why I smiled. You know now something more of what it means to be a soldier. You don't know very much. You can go back and tell of the narrow escape you had, and you need never come again. But for a few minutes, when you were under that rain of shells, you knew the glory of war. You prayed. That was why I smiled."
It was not exactly what one expects from a man wearing the _Medaille Militaire_ and the _Croix de Guerre_ with two palms. There was a certain implication in it. It sounded as though he meant that any man not in military uniform was a curiosity seeker or a sensation monger. I said something to that effect.
"No," he said hastily. "Not at all. Not at all. I only meant you could understand now, perhaps what it is that moves men in this, what makes them take part in it."
"Most of the men are conscripts," I said. "You are, I suppose."
"No," he answered. "I am a volunteer. I might be at the rear; I might even be writing for some paper."
"I beg your pardon," I said. "You are a volunteer. Tell me why you are here."
"I will tell you my name first," he said. "It is Léon Barbèsse. I was a schoolteacher in the centre of France, married, and with a boy four years old. The war came and I was called to the colors, as every one was called. But I was sent home. My lungs, you know. They are all right now, though. A few months of this life and your lungs kill you or they get all right. Mine are all right."