The Great Shadow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Of all the things that seem strange in that battle, now that I look back / upon it, there is nothing that was queerer than the way in which it / acted on my comrades; for some took it as though it had been their daily / meat without question or change, and others pattered out prayers from / the first gunfire to the last, and others again cursed and swore in a / way that was creepy to listen to. There was one, my own left-hand man, / Mike Threadingham, who kept telling about his maiden aunt, Sarah, and / how she had left the money which had been promised to him to a home for / the children of drowned sailors. Again and again he told me this story, / and yet when the battle was over he took his oath that he had never / opened his lips all day. As to me, I cannot say whether I spoke or not, / but I know that my mind and my memory were clearer than I can ever / remember them, and I was thinking all the time about the old folk at / home, and about Cousin Edie with her saucy, dancing eyes, and de Lissac / with his cat's whiskers, and all the doings at West Inch, which had / ended by bringing us here on the plains of Belgium as a cockshot for two / hundred and fifty cannons.

During all this time the roaring of those guns had been something / dreadful to listen to, but now they suddenly died away, though it was / like the lull in a thunderstorm when one feels that a worse crash is / coming hard at the fringe of it. There was still a mighty noise on the / distant wing, where the Prussians were pushing their way onwards, but / that was two miles away. The other batteries, both French and English, / were silent, and the smoke cleared so that the armies could see a little / of each other. It was a dreary sight along our ridge, for there seemed / to be just a few scattered knots of red and the lines of green where the / German Legion stood, while the masses of the French appeared to be as / thick as ever, though of course we knew that they must have lost many / thousands in these attacks. We heard a great cheering and shouting from / among them, and then suddenly all their batteries opened together with a / roar which made the din of the earlier part seem nothing in comparison. / It might well be twice as loud, for every battery was twice as near, / being moved right up to point blank range, with huge masses of horse / between and behind them to guard them from attack.