criss-cross
network between pegs and stakes along the edge of the neutral ground;
the howitzers and heavies were pounding and hammering at the parapets
and the communication trenches beyond.

For half an hour the appalling uproar continued, the solid earth shook
to the roar of the guns and the crashing of the shells. By the end of
that time both fronts to a depth of hundreds of yards were shrouded in
a slow-drifting haze of smoke and dust, through which the flashes of
the bursting shell blazed in quick glares of vivid light, and the spots
of their falling were marked by gushes of smoke and upflung billowing
clouds of thick dust. So far the noise was only and all of guns and
shell fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks a new note began
to weave itself into the uproar--the sharper crackle and clatter of
rifle and machine-gun fire.

Along the line of front marked for the main assault the guns suddenly
lifted their fire and commenced to pour it down further back, although
a number of the lighter guns continued to sweep the front parapet with
gusts of shrapnel. And then suddenly it could be seen that the front
British trench was alive and astir. The infantry, who had been
crouched and prone in the shelter of their trenches, rose suddenly and
began to clamber over the parapets into the open and make their way out
through the maze of their own entanglements. Instantly the parapet
opposite began to crackle with rifle fire and to beat out a steady
tattoo from the hammering machine-guns. The bullets hissed and spat
across the open and hailed upon the opposite parapet. Scores, hundreds
of men fell before they could clear the entanglements to form up in the
open, dropped as they climbed the parapet, or even as they stood up and
raised a head above it. But the mass poured out, shook itself roughly
into line, and began to run across the open. They ran for the most
part with shoulders hunched and heads stooped, as men would run through
a heavy rainstorm to a near shelter And as they ran they stumbled and
fell and picked themselves up and ran again--or crumpled up and lay
still or squirming feebly. As the line swept on doggedly it thinned
and shredded into broken groups. The men dropped under the rifle
bullets, singly or in twos and threes; the bursting shells tore great
gaps in the line, snatching a dozen men at a mouthful; here and there,
where it ran into the effective sweep of a maxim, the line simply
wither