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I started off in the trench till I was out of sight of my gun crew and then continued as before. It might be daft to expose myself like that but at least I had some idea where I was going. It might be daft to leave the shelter of the dug-out. But how, in war, does one decide what is daft? The answer is that one does not, if one can help it, decide these things in war. They are decided in peace, formulated in training manuals, enforced by orders. Such is the perversity of the human animal that these prudent dispositions intended to protect against irresponsibility and uniformed improvisation are then erected into rigid barriers as a defence against thought.
Thus, after Cambrai when Quainton and others of us who began to have doubt about our wisdom in taking up arms came to the point of decision, we fell back on inertia because we had decided to fight supposedly when in a godly, righteous and sober frame of mind. The solitary exception to this convention was a scruffy, red-faced, unshaven scoundrel who, being asked by our then apoplectic colonel – appropriately named Bulk – what had caused him to enlist, swivelled his blood-shot eye on the display of patriotic ribbon before him and said, “Booze”. When we learn, like the child walking, to act automatically without expenditure of thought we also learn how to avoid pain by economizing thought.
Again a shout; I jumped into the trench where Hauser and his crew were. Hauser said he had been to see the left flank gun under Sergeant O'Toole and found them in good form. Then there wasn't much point in going on to them? He agreed. He also agreed that the enemy was going to attack.
The barrage increased in intensity, but as we had no Very lights there was no way in which we could see if his infantry had left their
trenches. Then to our right I thought I saw figures. I drew my Colt and began to drop ammunition into the chamber. It gave me relief to be doing something. I heard through the din the chattering tinny fire of Lewis gun