He was the normal man. The elderly officer was abnormal. The normal man, soldier without camouflage, had no use for death at all, unless it was in connection with the fellow on the opposite side of the way. He hated the notion of it applied to himself. He fought ferociously, desperately, heroically, to escape it. Yet there were times, many times, when he paid not the slightest attention to the near neighborhood of that grisly specter, because in immediate, temporary tranquillity he thrust the thought from his mind, and smoked a cigarette, and exchanged a joke with the fellow at his elbow. There were other times when, in a state of mental exaltation, or spiritual self-sacrifice, or physical excitement, he acted regardless of all risks and did mad, marvelous, almost miraculous things, hardly conscious of his own acts, but impelled to do as he did by the passion within him⁠—passion of love, passion of hate, passion of fear, or passion of pride. Those men, moved like that, were the leaders, the heroes, and groups followed them sometimes because of their intensity of purpose and the infection of their emotion, and the comfort that came from their real or apparent self-confidence in frightful situations. Those who got through were astonished at their own courage.