Great sounds would have been lost in that crashing tumult; by one
of the paradoxes of battle lesser sounds were easily audible.

"All right," said Captain Griswold, "it's time! If some damn fool hasn't
gummed things up the creeping barrage should be starting out yonder and
everything is set. Come on, men--let's go!"

They went, each still behaving according to his own mode. The man with
the gripes who retched was still retching as he heaved himself up over
the parapet; the man who had laughed was still laughing; the man who had
sworn was mechanically continuing to repeat that naughty pet name of his
for the Fritzies. Nobody, though, called on anybody else to defend the
glory of the flag; nobody invited anybody to remember the _Lusitania_;
nobody spoke a single one of the fine speeches which the bushelmen of
fiction at home were even then thinking up to put into the mouths of
men moving into battle.

Indeed, not in any visible regard was the scene marked by drama. Merely
some muddied men burdened with ironmongery and bumpy with gas masks and
ammunition packs climbed laboriously out of a slit in the wet earth and
in squads--single filing, one man behind the next as directly as might
be--stepped along through a pale, sad, slightly misty light at rather a
deliberate pace, to traverse a barb-wired meadowland which rose before
them at a gentle incline. There was no firing of guns, no waving of
swords. There were no swords to wave. There was no enemy in sight and no
evidence as yet that they had been sighted by any enemy. As a matter of
fact, none of them--neither those who fell nor those who lived--saw on
that day a single living individual recognisable as a German.

A sense of enormous isolation encompassed them. They seemed to be all
alone in a corner of the world that was peopled by diabolical sounds,
but not by humans. They had a feeling that because of an error in the
plans they had been sent forward without supports; that they--a puny
handful--were to be sacrificed under the haunches of the Hindenburg line
while all those thousands of others who should have been their
companions upon this adventure bided safely behind, held back by the
countermand which through some hideous blunder had failed to reach them
in time. But they went on. Orders were to go on--and order, plus
discipline, plus the individual's sense of responsibility, plus that
fear of his that his mates may know how fearful of other things he
is--make it p