' 'forward observing
officers,' tucked away in carefully chosen and hidden look-outs,
fidgeted with wrist-watches and field-glasses, and passed back by
telephone continual messages about the strength of the growing light
and the lifting haze. An aeroplane droned high overhead, and an
'Archibald' (anti-aircraft gun) or two began to pattern the sky about
it with a trail of fleecy white smoke-puffs. The 'plane sailed on and
out of sight, the smoke-puffs and the wheezy barks of 'Archibald'
receding after it. Another period of silence followed. It was broken
by a faint report like the sound of a far-off door being slammed, and
almost at the same instant there came to the ear the faint thin whistle
of an approaching shell. The whistle rose to a rush and a roar that
cut off abruptly in a thunderous bang. The shell pitched harmlessly on
the open ground between the forward and support trenches. Again came
that faint 'slam,' this time repeated by four, and the 'bouquet' of
four shells crumped down almost on top of the support line. The four
crashes might have been a signal to the British guns. About a dozen
reports thudded out quickly and separately, and then in one terrific
blast of sound the whole line broke out in heavy fire. The infantry in
the trenches could distinguish the quick-following bangs of the guns
directly in line behind them, could separate the vicious swish and rush
of the shells passing immediately over their heads. Apart from these,
the reports blent in one long throbbing pulse of noise, an
indescribable medley of moanings, shrieks, and whistling in the air
rent by the passing shells. So ear-filling and confused was the
clamour that the first sharp, sudden bursts of the enemy shells over
our trenches were taken by the infantry for their own artillery's
shells falling short; but a very few moments proved plainly enough that
the enemy were replying vigorously to our fire. They had the ranges
well marked, too, and huge rents began to show in our parapets, strings
of casualties began to trickle back to the dressing stations in a
stream that was to flow steady and unbroken for many days and nights.
But the enemy defences showed more and quicker signs of damage,
especially at the main points, where the massed guns were busy
breaching the selected spots. Here the lighter guns were pouring a
hurricane of shrapnel on the dense thickets of barbed-wire
entanglements piled in loose loops and coils, strung in a