had been mischief with aeroplanes and bombs in Paris,' Barnet

relates; 'but it didn't seem to follow that "They" weren't still

somewhere elaborating their plans and issuing orders. When the

enemy began to emerge from the woods in front of us, we cheered

and blazed away, and didn't trouble much more about anything but

the battle in hand. If now and then one cocked up an eye into the

sky to see what was happening there, the rip of a bullet soon

brought one down to the horizontal again…

That battle went on for three days all over a great stretch of

country between Louvain on the north and Longwy to the south. It

was essentially a rifle and infantry struggle. The aeroplanes do

not seem to have taken any decisive share in the actual fighting

for some days, though no doubt they effected the strategy from

the first by preventing surprise movements. They were aeroplanes

with atomic engines, but they were not provided with atomic

bombs, which were manifestly unsuitable for field use, nor indeed

had they any very effective kind of bomb. And though they

manoeuvred against each other, and there was rifle shooting at

them and between them, there was little actual aerial fighting.

Either the airmen were indisposed to fight or the commanders on

both sides preferred to reserve these machines for scouting…

After a day or so of digging and scheming, Barnet found himself

in the forefront of a battle. He had made his section of rifle

pits chiefly along a line of deep dry ditch that gave a means of

inter-communication, he had had the earth scattered over the

adjacent field, and he had masked his preparations with tussocks

of corn and poppy. The hostile advance came blindly and

unsuspiciously across the fields below and would have been very

cruelly handled indeed, if some one away to the right had not

opened fire too soon.

'It was a queer thrill when these fellows came into sight,' he

confesses; 'and not a bit like manoeuvres. They halted for a

time on the edge of the wood and then came forward in an open

line. They kept walking nearer to us and not looking at us, but

away to the right of us. Even when they began to be hit, and

their officers' whistles woke them up, they didn't seem to see

us. One or two halted to fire, and then they all went back

towards the wood again. They went slowly at first, looking round

at us, then the shelter of the wood seemed to draw them, and they

trotted. I fired rather mechanically and missed, then I fired

again, and then I became earnest to hit something, made sure of

my sighting, and aimed very carefully at a blue back that was

dodging about in the corn. At first I couldn't satisfymyself

and didn't shoot, his movements were so spasmodic and uncertain;

then I think he came to a ditch or some such obstacle and halted

for a moment. "GOT you," I whispered, and pulled the trigger.

'I had the strangest sensations about that man. In the first

instance, when I felt that I had hit him I was irradiated with

joy and pride…

'I sent him spinning. He jumped and threw up his arms…

'Then I saw the corn tops waving and had glimpses of him flapping

about. Suddenly I felt sick. I hadn't killed him…

'In some way he was disabled and smashed up and yet able to

struggle about. I began to think…

'For nearly two hours that Prussian was agonising in the corn.

Either he was calling out or some one was shouting to him…

'Then he jumped up-he seemed to try to get up upon his feet with

one last effort; and then he fell like a sack and lay quite still

and never moved again.

'He had been unendurable, and I believe some one had shot him

dead. I had been wanting to do so for some time…'

The enemy began sniping the rifle pits from shelters they made

for themselves in the woods below. A man was hit in the pit next

to Barnet, and began cursing and crying out in a violent rage.

Barnet crawled along the ditch to him and found him in great

pain, covered with blood, frantic with indignation, and with the

half of his right hand smashed to a pulp. 'Look at this,' he

kept repeating, hugging it and then extending it. 'Damned

foolery! Damned foolery! My right hand, sir! My right hand!'

For some time Barnet could do nothing with him. The man was

consumed by his tortured realisation of the evil silliness of

war, the realisation which had come upon him in a flash with the

bullet that had destroyed his skill and use as an artificer for

ever. He was looking at the vestiges with a horror that made him

impenetrable to any other idea. At last the poor wretch let

Barnet tie up his bleeding stump and help him along the ditch

that conducted him deviously out of range…

When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for water,

and all day long the line of pits suffered greatly from thirst.

For food they had chocolate and bread.

'At first,' he says, 'I was extraordinarily excited by my baptism

of fire. Then as the heat of the day came on I experienced an

enormous tedium and discomfort. The flies became extremely

troublesome, and my little grave of a rifle pit was invaded by

ants. I could not get up or move about, for some one in the trees

had got a mark on me. I kept thinking of the dead Prussian down

among the corn, and of the bitter outcries of my own man. Damned

foolery! It WAS damned foolery. But who was to blame? How had

we got to this?…

'Early in the afternoon an aeroplane tried to dislodge us with

dynamite bombs, but she was hit by bullets once or twice, and

suddenly dived down over beyond the trees.

' "From Holland to the Alps this day," I thought, "there must be