Lieutenant Smith had dropped. In the next platoon
Lieutenant Kirkpatrick fell dead. A gallant lad, this; he fell leading his
men and with a word of cheer on his lips.

We were about two hundred yards from the enemy's trench and my estimation
is that easily one-third of our fighting men were gone. Easily eighty per
cent. of our officers were out of the immediate game. Right in front of our
eyes our captain--Captain Straight--fell. As he went down he blew two short
blasts on his whistle, which was the signal to hug the earth once more.
And we dropped.

The officers and men who had been hit had begun their weary crawl back to
the dressing station; that is, all of them who were able to make the
effort. We saw that Captain Straight made no attempt to move. Some of us
crept up to his side.

"Hit in the upper leg," he whispered in reply to the queries.

"Go back, sir, go back!" we urged, but Captain Straight was obdurate. He
had made up his mind that he was going to see the thing through, and stick
to it he would no matter what the cost to himself. He realized that only by
some super-human effort would we now be able to take the enemy trench. The
machine gun fire was hellish. The infantry fire was blinding. A bullet
would flash through the sleeve of a tunic, rip off the brim of a cap, bang
against a water-bottle, bury itself in the mass of a knapsack. It seemed as
though no one could live in such a hail of lead. But no one had fallen down
on the task of the day. Each battalion was advancing, with slowness and
awful pain, but all were advancing.

Captain Straight knew how we were placed for effectives, both in officers
and men. He knew how we adored him. He lay a few minutes to get his breath,
then attempted to stand, but could not, as one leg was completely out of
commission. He dragged himself along with his hands, catching hold of the
tufts of grass or digging his fingers into the soft earth. He made thirty
or forty yards in this way, then one long blast of his whistle and we
rushed ahead, to fall flat on a level with him as he sounded the two-blast
command. Probably ten times he dragged himself forward, and ten times we
rushed and dropped in that awful charge. The captain gritted his teeth, for
his pain must have been horrible. He waved his arm as he lay and waited
ahead of us--"Come on, lads--come on!" And we came.

I don't know what other men may have felt in that last advance. For myself,
the thought flashed across