e-guns shrieked out lead in a high staccato until the advance,
slackened, wavered and fell back. Hun artillery showered shell, gas, and
shrapnel over every yard of ground. For a period the Normans fell in
dozens everywhere. The canal in places was stained red, and Norman
bodies drifted twirling away on its fast-running waters before sinking.

AMMUNITION WAS SHORT. Scouts from Headquarters tried to get into
Marcoing with the information. Clarke moving along the road found
himself unable to return or to move because of a Fritz advanced post.
One of the Middlesex crossing a clearing in the trees was wiped out by
machine-gun fire and toppled over into the canal.

Mighty trees, a yard radius, bordered those waters, but at every few
paces forward the eye took in one of these monsters split open by a
shell. The pulse quickened; if it did that to a tree what would be left
of you--anyhow you wouldn't know much about it. Approaching Marcoing the
hum of an aeroplane, flying low sounded--in a second I feigned casualty,
but he got home on the other scout ahead. Phew, wind up!

The very streets of Marcoing were almost obliterated by the jumbled heap
of stone, wood-work and bricks lying across them. Bodies in every
inconceivable state of partial or whole dismemberment made a ghastly
array in the bleak sunlight, blood from man and animal formed dark pools
in the hollow sections of the shattered roadway. Progress could only be
made by moving apprehensively close up to what walls were still
standing, and to sprint wildly over the open. Wounded were streaming in
hundreds towards the dressing station in the square ... many failed to
reach there alive.

From the top of the Chateau in Masnieres, Corporal Cochrane (the finest
little N.C.O. in the Battalion) and a few others were sniping at Hun
ARTILLERY some four hundred yards distant. AT LAST had the infantryman
his chance.

A steady glance down the sights. Crack! Miss! Crack! Got him but only
slightly. Crack, crack! The unholy glee of it. You could see by the way
he fell that it had gone home fatally. Crack--another five rounds are
rammed into the magazine ... pump it into them, play hell with that
Artillery while the chance lasts.

They stare wildly about in a frenzy. Crack, crack, crack! They have had
enough and retreat a few hundred yards further south. Still, there lies
a dozen or more who will not again pour into the quivering flesh
shrapnel's hell-hot agony.

A glance along th