sides their fellows fought over them with bayonet and
butt. In more than one such place the barricade was at last built by
the heap of the dead who had fought for possession; in others, crude
barriers of earth and sandbags were piled up and fought across and
pulled down and built up again a dozen times.

In the middle of the ferocious individual hand-to-hand fighting a
counter-attack was launched against the captured trench. A swarm of
the enemy leaped from the next trench and rushed across the twenty or
thirty yards of open to the captured front line. But the counterattack
had been expected. The guns caught the attackers as they left their
trench and beat them down in scores. A line of riflemen had been
installed under cover of what had been the parapet of the enemy front
trench, and this line broke out in 'the mad minute' of rifle fire. The
shrapnel and the rifles between them smashed the counter-attack before
it had well formed. It was cut down in swathes and had totally
collapsed before it reached half-way to the captured trench. But
another was hurled forward instantly, was up out of the trench and
streaming across the open before the infantry had finished re-charging
their magazines. Then the rifles spoke again in rolling crashes, the
screaming shrapnel pounced again on the trench that still erupted
hurrying men, while from the captured trench itself came hurtling bombs
and grenades. Smoke and dust leaped and swirled in dense clouds about
the trenches and the open between them, but through the haze the ragged
front fringe of the attack loomed suddenly and pressed on to the very
lip of the trench. Beyond that point it appeared it could not pass.
The British infantry, cramming full cartridge-clips into their
magazines, poured a fresh cataract of lead across the broken parapet
into the charging ranks, and the ranks shivered and stopped and melted
away beneath the fire, while the remnants broke and fled back to cover.
With a yell the defenders of a moment before became the attackers.
They leaped the trench and fell with the bayonet on the flying
survivors of the counter-attack. For the most part these were killed
as they fled; but here and there groups of them turned at bay, and in a
dozen places as many fights raged bitterly for a few minutes, while the
fresh attack pushed on to the next trench. A withering fire poured
from it but could not stop the rush that fought its way on and into the
second-line tr