"In a charge," said the Sergeant, "the 'Hotwater Guards' don't think
about going back till there's none of them left to go back; and you can
always remember this: if you go forward you _may_ die, if you go back
you _will_ die."

The memory of that phrase came back to Private Everton, tramping down
the dark road to the firing-line. Just because he had no knowledge of
how he himself would behave in this his baptism of fire, just because
he was in deadly fear that he would feel fear, or, still worse, show
it, he strove to fix that phrase firmly in front of his mind. "If I can
remember that," he thought, "it will stop me going back, anyway," and
he repeated: "If you go back you _will_ die, if you go back you _will_
die," over and over.

It is true that, for all his repetition, when a field battery, hidden
close by the side of the road on which they marched, roared in a sudden
and ear-splitting salvo of six guns, for the instant he thought he was
under fire and that a huge shell had burst somewhere desperately close
to them. He had jumped, his comrades assured him afterwards, a clear
foot and a half off the ground, and he himself remembered that his
first involuntary glance and thought flashed to the deep ditch that ran
alongside the road.

When he came to the trenches, at last, and filed down the narrow
communication-trench and into his Company's appointed position in the
deep ditch with a narrow platform along its front that was the forward
fire-trench, he remembered with unpleasant clearness that instinctive
start and thought of taking cover. By that time he had actually been
under fire, had heard the shells rush over him and the shattering noise
of their burst; had heard the bullets piping and humming and hissing