N.C.O. pulled him down into
the trench.

"It's no use throwin' yer life aw'y, sir. You won't 'elp 'em over by
barkin' at 'em."

He was up again almost at once, coolly watching the progress of the
troops from behind a small barricade of sandbags, and reporting upon it
to batteries several miles in rear. The temptation to look over the
parapet was not to be resisted. The artillery lengthened their ranges. I
saw the curtain of flame-shot smoke leap at a bound to the next line of
German trenches.

Within a few moments several lines of reserves filed into the front
trench and went over the parapet in support of the first line, advancing
with heads down like men bucking into the fury of a gale. We saw them
only for an instant as they jumped to their feet outside the trench and
rushed forward. Many were hit before they had passed through the gaps in
our barbed wire. Those who were able crept back and were helped into the
trench by comrades. One man was killed as he was about to reach a place
of safety. He lay on the parapet with his head and arms hanging down
inside the trench. His face was that of a boy of twenty-one or
twenty-two. I carry the memory of it with me to-day as vividly as when I
left the trenches in November.

Following the attacking infantry were those other soldiers whose work,
though less spectacular than that of the riflemen, was just as essential
and quite as dangerous. Royal Engineers, with picks and shovels and
sandbags, rushed forward to reverse the parapets of the captured
trenches, and to clear out the wreckage, while the riflemen waited for
the launching of the first counter-attack. They were preceded by men of
the Signaling Corps, who advanced swiftly and skillfully, unwinding
spools of insulated telephone wire as they went. Bomb-carriers,
stretcher-bearers, intent upon their widely divergent duties, followed.
The work of salvage and destruction went hand in hand.

The battle continued until evening, when we received orders to move up to
the firing-line. We started at five o'clock, and although we had less
than three miles to go, we did not reach the end of our journey until
four the next morning, owing to the fatigue parties and the long stream
of wounded which blocked the communication trenches. For more than an
hour we lay just outside of the trench looking down on a seemingly
endless procession of casualties. Some of the men were crying like
children, some groaning pitifully, some laughing d