Another bomber roared overhead, quite low, and I saw the first of a string of flares splash into flame; it was dead ahead of me and it looked close enough to touch. I flopped back on the bottom of the trench and began to shake. The whine started again and I thought, “They are going to get me this time, they are systematically bombing the CP in a pattern of strips and this time I am right in the middle of the strip.” I tried to sink my head into my shoulders, turtle fashion, and I closed my eyes. The whine crept down the scale and I shook, not like shivering from cold but slower and bigger. Some of my weight was on my arms and they shook in particular, but the source of the shaking was nowhere and all over; I remember feeling my knees bumping the ground.

I had plenty of time to think, but nothing entered my mind except the idea that this was the one with my number on it. Then the bombs went off, the same all-embracing, blanketing explosion, and I knew that I hadn’t been hit.

My shaking, however, went on. The noise of the airplane motors grew fainter and I lifted myself off the ground, still shaking. The flares had dimmed. In the half-darkness I saw a figure run across the field and I remembered for the first time since I had hit the slit trench that I was not entirely alone, that I was in fact surrounded by slit trenches filled with my war-tent associates. I wanted to talk to them. For a moment or two I sat in the slit-trench trying to decide whether the raid was over, having a hard time making up my mind, unable to bring into proper focus the obvious facts that the flares were going out and that the plans were now almost out of earshot. I don’t remember that I ever made up my mind, but I did want to talk to somebody, so finally I got out of the trench and ran a few yards to a sort of dugout covered with boards and dirt. I was still shivering, but I could breathe again and I had become self-conscious to the extent of realizing that I was badly scared.

Two friends of mine were inside with a stray pup they had picked up. I crawled in with them and laughed at the dog, which was shivering too, and we sat in the dark for fifteen minutes, exchanging accounts of the raid, each of us claiming that he had been most frightened, talking the terror out of our systems.