was
instant pitch darkness on every hand, and out of that a hundred
trumpets sounded. Instantly, each squadron leader leaped the
earthwork, shouting to his men. Ranjoor Singh leaped up in front of
us, and we followed him, all forgetting their distrust of him in the
fierce excitement--remembering only how he had led us in the charge
on that first night. The air was thick with din, and fumes, and
flying metal--for the Germans were not forgetting to use artillery.
I ceased to think of anything but going forward. Who shall describe
it?

Once in Bombay I heard a Christian preacher tell of the Judgment Day
to come, when graves shall give up their dead. That is not our Sikh
idea of judgment, but his words brought before my mind a picture
riot so much unlike a night attack in Flanders. He spoke of the
whole earth trembling and consumed by fire--of thunder and lightning
and a great long trumpet call--of the dead leaping alive again from
the graves where they lay buried. Not a poor picture, sahib, of a
night attack in Flanders!

The first line of German trenches, and the second had been pounded
out of being by our guns. The barbed wire had been cut into
fragments by our shrapnel. Here and there an arm or a leg protruded
from the ground--here and there a head. For two hundred yards and
perhaps more there was nothing to oppose us, except the enemy shells
bursting so constantly that we seemed to breathe splintered metal.
Yet very few were hit. The din was so great that it seemed to be
silence. We were phantom men, going forward without sound of
footfall. I could neither feel nor think for the first two hundred
yards, but ran with my bayonet out in front of me. And then I did
feel. A German bayonet barked my knuckles. After that there was
fighting such as I hope never to know again.

The Germans did not seem to have been taken by surprise at all. They
had made ample preparation. And as for holding us in contempt, they
gave no evidence of that. Their wounded were unwilling to surrender
because their officers had given out we would torture prisoners. We
had to pounce on them, and cut their buttons off and slit their
boots, so that they must use both hands to hold their trousers up
and could not run. And that took time so that we lagged behind a
little, for we took more prisoners than the regiments to right and
left of us. The Dogra regiment to our left and the Gurkha regiment
to our right gained on us fast, and we became, as it w