" Later on, however, he was wounded.
Though the artillery fire has proved most destructive to all ranks, by
far the worst ordeal of the troops was the long retreat in the early
stages of the war. It exhausted and exasperated the men. They grew angry
and impatient. None but the best troops in the world, with a profound
belief in the judgment and valor of their officers, could have stood up
against it. A statement by a driver of the Royal Field Artillery,
published in the _Evening News_, gives a vivid impression of how the men
felt. "I have no clear notion of the order of events in the long
retreat," he says; "it was a nightmare, like being seized by a madman
after coming out of a serious illness and forced towards the edge of a
precipice." The constant marching, the want of sleep, the restless and
(as it sometimes seemed to the men) purposeless backward movement night
and day drove them into a fury. The intensity of the warfare, the fierce
pressure upon the mental and physical powers of endurance, might well
have exercised a mischievous effect upon the men. Instead, however, it
only brought out their finest qualities.
In an able article in _Blackwood's Magazine_, on "Moral Qualities in
War," Major C.A.L. Yate, of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry,
dealt with the "intensity" of the war strain, of which he himself had
acute experience.
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