In the evening the Turk was still a little chastened, and all night we laboured at the burying of the bodies. It was bad work, but so strong was the horror upon us that every man who could be spared took his part, careless of sleep or rest, so long as he should not sit for another day with those things. But we could only bury half of them that night, and all the next day we went again through that lingering torment. And in the afternoon when we had orders to go up to the front line after dusk for an attack, we were glad. It was one of the very few moments in my experience when the war-correspondent's legend of a regiment's pleasure at the prospect of battle came true. For anything was welcome if only we could get out of that trench, away from the smell and the flies, away from those bodies....
I am not going to tell you all about that attack, only so much of it as affects this history, which is the history of a man and not of the war. It was a one-battalion affair, and eventually a failure. D Company was in reserve, and our only immediate task was to provide a small digging-party, forty men under an officer, to dig some sort of communication ditch to the new line when taken. Burnett was told off for this job; we took these things more or less in turn, and it was his turn. And Burnett did not like it. We sat round a single candle under a waterproof sheet in a sort of open recess at the back of the front line, while Egerton gave him his orders. And there ran in my head the old bit about 'they all began with one accord to make excuse.' Burnett made no actual excuse; he could not. But he asked aggressive questions about the arrangements which plainly said that he considered this task too dangerous and too difficult for Burnett. He wanted more men, he wanted another officer--but no more could be spared from an already small reserve. He was full of 'the high ground on the right' from which his party would 'obviously' be enfiladed and shot down to a man. However, he went. And we sat listening to the rapid fire or the dull thud of bombs, until in front a strange quiet fell, but to right and left were the sounds of many machine-guns. As usual, no one knew what had happened, but we expected a summons at any moment. We were all restless and jumpy, particularly Harry. For a man who has doubts of himself or too much imagination, to be in reserve is the worst thing possible. Harry was talkative again, and held forth about the absurdity of the whole attack, as to which he was perfectly right. But I felt that all the time he was thinking, 'Shall I do the right thing? shall I do the right thing? shall I make a mess of it?'