arksmen--and they COULD
shoot. But Fritz would not have any. They did not like (those who had
time to look back on their record sprint) the nasty gleam of those
Norman bayonets. It was a soft thing; they moved onwards unchecked even
as during the rehearsal. Tanks ahead reached the hill-crest and stood
black and ugly against the sky; further to the right one was burning
with high leaping flames. The Normans panted up the slope, poured into
the two quarries in one bloodthirsty rush to find "nothing doing,"
scrambled out again, and reaching the Wood's edge calmly pushed their
way through with all the phlegm of veterans to their objective some
thirty yards beyond the last row of trees and commenced to dig in.
Someone spotted a sniper post, coolly stretched himself out on the
ground, muttered: "Three hundred yards," and squinted along the sights.
Ping, ping ... two bodies fell limp from a platform--up a leafy tree.
The Private slowly cut two notches on his rifle-butt.

Two black, charred figures grinned hideously from out of the smouldering
remains of a British aeroplane as the two Guernsey Brigade Scouts
hastened back to their Headquarters, to report the objective carried
with ONLY TEN CASUALTIES. Away by the narrow bridge above Marcoing one
living and three dead machine gunners were lying in a mangled heap.
Still further back a shattered lad, unable to move, stretched out right
in the track of an oncoming tank, shrieked frenziedly for succour ...
then abrupt silence as of a whistle shut off even while the eyes were
rivetted fascinated on the inexorable crushing machine. A ghastly heap
of tangled, mutilated bodies, unrecognisable as such except by the grey
German uniform, were lying beneath a tank blown in by a shell--the crew
huddled inside in a gruesome mass.

At the bottom of a hollow a grey-cloaked figure was bunched in that
strange posture bearing the hall-mark of fast approaching death. His
dull eyes filled with terror at the sound of my footsteps ... strange
ingrained knowledge of the Hunnish method of dealing with similar cases
pervaded his mind.

"It is--finish," he whispered pitifully in bad English.

"Where are you hit?" He shook his head slowly.

"It is finish," he reiterated weakly.

"Want anything--any water?"

"No." A battery of artillery rumbled noisily down the adjacent roadway.
His eyes brightened.

"You never win," he muttered, defiance strong in his tone. But one
glance took in those stoic moun