hangs poised; and even as the falling wave
breaks thundering and rushing, so the song broke in a crash of sweeping
sound along the line of the German trench on that one word--'England!'

Before the last sound of it had passed, the singer had plunged into the
next verse, his voice soaring and shaking with an intensity of feeling.
The whole effect was inspiring, wonderful, dramatic. One felt that it
was emblematic, the heart and soul of the German people poured out in
music and words. And the scorn, the bitter anger, hatred, and malice
that vibrated again in that chorused last word might well have brought
fear and trembling to the heart of an enemy. But the enemy immediately
concerned, to wit His Majesty's Regiment of Tower Bridge Foot, were
most obviously not impressed with fear and trembling. Impressed they
certainly were. Their applause rose in a gale of clappings and cries
and shouts. They were impressed, and Private 'Enery Irving, clapping
his hands sore and stamping his feet in the trench-bottom, voiced the
impression exactly. 'It beats Saturday night in the gallery o' the old
Brit.,' he said enthusiastically. 'That bloke--blimy--'e ought to be
doin' the star part at Drury Lane'; and he wiped his hot hands on his
trousers and fell again to beating them together, palms and fingers
curved cunningly, to obtain a maximum of noise from the effort.

An officer passed hurriedly along the trench. 'If there's any firing,
every man to fire over the parapet and only straight to his own front,'
he said, and almost at the moment there came a loud 'bang' from out in
front, followed quickly by 'bang-bang-bang' in a running series of
reports.

The shouting had cut off instantly on the first bang, some rifles
squibbed off at intervals for a few seconds and increased suddenly to a
sputtering roar. With the exception of one platoon near their centre
the Towers replied rapidly to the fire, the maxims joined in, and a
minute later, with a whoop and a crash the shells from a British
battery passed over the trench and burst along the line of the German
parapet. After that the fire died away gradually, and about ten
minutes later a figure scrambled hastily over the parapet and dropped
into safety, his boots squirting water, his wet shirt-tails flapping
about his bare wet and muddy legs. He was the 'bomb officer' who had
taken advantage of the 'Hymn of Hate' diversion to go crawling up a
little ditch that crossed the neutral g