e Norman ranks during the late afternoon showed
appreciably by the many gaps separating man from man how many casualties
had already obtained. Shells claimed a large toll of victims even among
the more or less screened rows of figures lying along the eastern edge
of the canal. Le Poidevin and Le Page, lighting cigarettes from the same
match, caught one in the right and the other the left leg, two flying
pieces of shrapnel from a shell bursting over one hundred yards distant;
fell and stared at each other in painful astonishment ... hobbled
laboriously on the long journey (for a wounded man) into Marcoing.

Stumpy, secure behind a small mound, had gazed with black pessimism on
life from the moment Tich had given ALL.

"Gawd," he observed generally, "ain't it orful. What with shells, an'
dead, an' gas! An' I ain't 'ad any rum since last night. Wot a pore
Tommy has got ter put up with."

Night. A night when men crouched over their rifle waiting to kill, when
the owl had gone far from the slaughter and even not the fitful flutter
of a bat sped through the dark pall. Only man: savage, primitive man,
glared at where each remained hidden. The blood lust to kill, always to
kill. Animal ferocity and passion: man's inheritance.

From No Man's Land came the sobbing call of wounded for succour. Far,
far across the void sounded those despairing frenzied shrieks. Hoarse,
appealing, incessant, until they weakened and nothing reached the ear
but the smothered sobs of men whose life's sands were running out for
want of that aid, so near, but which they were unable to reach.

Verey lights from Fritz's lines rose and fell with monotonous certainty,
throwing faint glows on the huddled heaps lying in all directions
between the two fronts. A gleam would catch reflection in the glassy
eyes of a stiff form, fade and leave you staring hypnotised into the
night. Was it distorted fancy ... then you would see it again, and
again, until in its very frequency you noticed--nothing.

Shelling slackened. Now and again a pause when the stillness could be
"heard." From the woods in intermittent intervals the one solitary gun
still intact in an entire battery belched forth a lone shell into the
enemy lines. In the fantastic flash of each explosion three
shirt-sleeved forms showed a ruddy silhouette of blackened hands and
features. A tearing, splintering crash awoke echoes as some great bough
was shattered in impact with a "heavy" and crackled its cum