was a dangerous passage, because the
enemy's guns had the position and range exactly and were keeping a
constant fire on the trench, knowing the probability of the supports
using it. In fact the supports moving up had actually abandoned the use
of the approach trenches and were hurrying across the open for the most
part. Macgillivray, reluctant at first to abandon the cover of the
trench, was driven at last to doing so by a fact forced upon him at every
step that the place was a regular shell-trap. Sections of it were blown
to shapeless ruins, and pits and mounds of earth and the deep
shell-craters gaped in it and to either side for all its length. Even
where the high-explosive shells had not fallen the shrapnel had swept and
the clouds of flies that swarmed at every step told of the blood-soaked
ground, even where the torn fragments of limbs and bodies had not been
left, as they were in many places.

So Macgillivray left the trench and scurried across the open with bullets
hissing and buzzing about his ears and shells roaring overhead. He
reached the forward fire trench at last and halted there to recover his
breath. The battered trench was filled with the men who had been moved
up in support, and there were many wounded amongst them. He busied
himself for half an hour amongst them, and then prepared to move on
across the open to what had been the enemy's front-line trench. It was
dusk now and shadowy figures could be seen coming back towards the
British lines. At one point, a dip in the ground and an old ditch gave
some cover from the flying bullets. Towards this point along what had
been the face and was now the back of the enemy front trench, and then in
along the line of the hollow, a constant procession of wounded moved
slowly. It was easy to distinguish them, and even to pick out in most
cases where they were wounded, because in the dusk the bandages of the
first field dressing showed up startlingly white and clear on the shadowy
forms against the shadowy background. Some, with the white patches on
heads, arms, hands, and upper bodies, were walking; others, with the
white on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, leaning on the
parapet or using their rifles crutch-wise; and others lay on the
stretchers that moved with desperate slowness towards safety. The line
appeared unending; the dim figures could be seen trickling along the
parapets as far as the eye could distinguish them; the white dots