While the war was at its worst one of our boys, a Lieutenant, who had
done trench service from “support” to going “over the top,” was, after
serious wounds, invalided home as a training officer. He wore a medal
on his breast that attested his bravery, but in a little talk at a club
dinner he said, “If you hear any fellow say he was not scared when
going ‘over the top’ or when scuttling around under shell and gun fire,
you may safely set him down as a darned liar or as a mental defective.
We do get scared a plenty—but we keep on fighting. It is true a man may
forget his scare in the excitement of action, and generally does; but
he has moments when the red goes out of his face.”
Some of the coolest, bravest men taking part in desperate engagements
have made similar statements. The thing in war is not a question of
“to be scared or not to be scared,” but of unfailing obedience to
orders in spite of colorless cheeks and tremblings of the flesh.
That is an impression one gets from such accounts of war as that of
Sergeant Alexander McClintock, a Kentucky boy, who felt the lure so
keenly that in October, 1915, he hurried over to Canada and as soon
thereafter as formalities permitted he joined the Canadian Grenadier
Guards. In due course the Guards were sent across and were dropped
into the front trenches in Belgium. From that time onward until he was
invalided home wearing a Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous
bravery young McClintock had adventures not a few, enough and varied to
make fascinating the book he wrote, _Best o’ Luck_, which the George
Doran Company published early in 1918. The Sergeant tells his story
capitally, whether recounting experiences with those formidable and
ghoulish beasts, the trench rats, or encounters with the not altogether
admirable trench Hun. For a long time the life in the trenches was dull
monotony, about the only relief in the way of amusement being found in
shooting rats as they scurried along the parapet. He says: