d up in the
face of a murderous German fire.]

"For weeks past the German airmen had grown strangely shy. On this
Wednesday morning none were aloft to spy out the strange doings
which, as dawn broke, might have been descried on the desolate
roads behind the British lines.

"From ten o'clock of the preceding evening endless files of men
marched silently down the roads leading towards the German
positions through Laventie and Richebourg St. Vaast, poor shattered
villages of the dead where months of incessant bombardment have
driven away the last inhabitants and left roofless houses and rent
roadways....

"Two days before, a quiet room, where Nelson's Prayer stands on the
mantel-shelf, saw the ripening of the plans that sent these sturdy
sons of Britain's four kingdoms marching all through the night. Sir
John French met the army corps commanders and unfolded to them his
plans for the offensive of the British army against the German
line at Neuve Chapelle.

"The onslaught was to be a surprise. That was its essence. The
Germans were to be battered with artillery, then rushed before they
recovered their wits. We had thirty-six clear hours before us. Thus
long, it was reckoned (with complete accuracy as afterwards
appeared), must elapse before the Germans, whose line before us had
been weakened, could rush up reinforcements. To ensure the enemy's
being pinned down right and left of the 'great push,' an attack was
to be delivered north and south of the main thrust simultaneously
with the assault on Neuve Chapelle."

After describing the impatience of the British soldiers as they awaited
the signal to open the attack, and the actual beginning of the
engagement, the narrator continues:

"Then hell broke loose. With a mighty, hideous, screeching burst of
noise, hundreds of guns spoke. The men in the front trenches were
deafened by the sharp reports of the field-guns spitting out their
shells at close range to cut through the Germans' barbed wire
entanglements. In some cases the trajectory of these vicious
missiles was so flat that they passed only a few feet above the
British trenches.

"The din was continuous. An officer who had the curious idea of
putting his ear to the ground said it was as though the earth were
being smitten great blows with a Titan's hammer. After the first
few shells had plunged screaming amid clouds of earth and dust into
the German trenches, a dense pall of smoke hung over the German
lines. The