ng, a hurricane of German shells
plumped into the trench where he had left his beloved battalion, raking
it from end to end.

No need for those waiting bayonets now, was his soul-rending thought, as
he saw the trench disappear in a holocaust of flame and smoke. He had
acted for the best, but he ought to have gone back with his news, for,
if the battalion was where he had left it, then the 2/12th Royal
Reedshires must have been wiped off the face of the earth!

CHAPTER XXXI

With Dashwood's Brigade

High overhead three red rockets burst in the sky, and the German guns
ceased at the signal.

In the dazzling gleam of the concentrated searchlights, Dennis saw a
Prussian officer raise himself cautiously to peer across the sandbags,
and reconnoitre the obliterated British trench.

His eyes reached the edge of the parapet, but no farther, and in the
white figure that leapt up into view and shot him dead, Dennis
recognised young Wetherby.

Like magic the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white
figures pouring in one crashing volley at point-blank range, and with a
full-throated British cheer the Reedshires vaulted over the wet ditch
and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians with the bayonet.

Taken completely by surprise, the first line of lying-down men died
practically on its knees, and before the second line could press a
trigger the battalion was into them.

There was no quarter asked or given. The Reedshires were out to kill,
and they killed. In the black shadow of the German redoubt Dennis
Dashwood watched one of the finest fights of the war, every fibre of his
being itching to be in it. But between him and that raving, raging
tumult stretched the tightly packed files of the enemy, thrown into
panic-stricken confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, and after
a mad few minutes, in spite of the efforts of their officers to hold
them up, the vaunted Prussians broke and streamed back to the protection
of the strong trench.

In a flash of time Dennis saw many things: the slanting rain on our
helmets, the wisp of fog that rolled lazily between him and that Homeric
combat. He recognised his brother, half a head taller than anybody else,
thrusting and hewing like a hero of old, and Littlewood working a Lewis
gun on the top of the sandbags, the shots just clearing our own fellows'
heads.

From an embrasure in the angle of the salient above him the hateful
hammering of a German ma