The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

The Musketeers went back from the firing line with less than two hundred of their original strength. They had, of course, been supplemented by draughts from time to time, but this was not the same thing to those who had been through the campaign since the middle of August. These were all known to one another, and were banded together by ties that were almost sacred. It mattered little or nothing whence these original men came, whether they had been picked up in the gutter or were the finest product of the English public schools. For all those distinctions had been sunk now, and the Musketeers were as a band of brothers.

They had come out of the trenches, battered and scarred, ragged and unshaven, but every man was as fine as a star, and as hard as a bar of steel. They were going back to the rest which they needed a great deal more than they were aware, for it was only when the tension relaxed that they realised what the nervous strain of the last three months had been. There were men amongst them who could not sleep, or who started up in the middle of the night crying that the foe were upon them, and that the trenches were in danger. There were men who could not write a letter, men who could not still the quivering of their nerves or steady their hands without something to rest upon. It was only when danger was near that they could forget all this and string themselves up for the fight again. They had marched towards the base hardly conscious of their limbs, and there were some amongst them who declared that for weeks past there had been no sensation in their lower limbs whatever. It was only when they cut away their ragged breeches and puttees, reduced to a mere strip, that they begun to realise that they were walking upright.