perhaps a third of them would be mangled, blinded or broken, lamed, made imbecile or disfigured, with the color and the taste of life taken from them, so that they would never move with comrades nor exult in the sun.... But as they moved out, these things were but the end they asked, the reward they had come for, the unseen cross upon the breast. All that they felt was a gladness of exultation that their young courage was to be used. They went like Kings in a pageant to the imminent death.
As they passed from moorings to the man-of-war anchorage on their way to the sea, their feeling that they had done with life and were going out to something new welled up in those battalions; they cheered and cheered till the harbor rang with cheering. As each ship crammed with soldiers drew near the battleships, the men swung their caps and cheered again, and the sailors answered, and the noise of cheering swelled, and the men in the ships not yet moving joined in, and the men ashore, till all the life in the harbor was giving thanks that it could go to death rejoicing. All was beautiful in that gladness of men about to die....
They left the harbor very, very slowly; this tumult of cheering lasted a long time; no one who heard it will ever forget it, or think of it unshaken. It broke the hearts of all there with pity
