sickening fumes of lyddite blew back into the British
trenches. In some places the troops were smothered in earth and
dust or even spattered with blood from the hideous fragments of
human bodies that went hurtling through the air. At one point the
upper half of a German officer, his cap crammed on his head, was
blown into one of our trenches.

"Words will never convey any adequate idea of the horror of those
five and thirty minutes. When the hands of officers' watches
pointed to five minutes past eight, whistles resounded along the
British lines. At the same moment the shells began to burst farther
ahead, for, by previous arrangement, the gunners, lengthening their
fuses, were 'lifting' on to the village of Neuve Chapelle so as to
leave the road open for our infantry to rush in and finish what the
guns had begun.

"The shells were now falling thick among the houses of Neuve
Chapelle, a confused mass of buildings seen reddish through the
pillars of smoke and flying earth and dust. At the sound of the
whistle--alas for the bugle, once the herald of victory, now
banished from the fray!--our men scrambled out of the trenches and
hurried higgledy-piggledy into the open. Their officers were in
front. Many, wearing overcoats and carrying rifles with fixed
bayonets, closely resembled their men.

[Illustration: BRITISH INDIAN TROOPS CHARGING THE GERMAN TRENCHES AT
NEUVE CHAPELLE

Germany counted on a revolution in India, but the Indian troops proved
to be among the most loyal and brilliant fighters in the Imperial
forces.]

"It was from the center of our attacking line that the assault was
pressed home soonest. The guns had done their work well. The
trenches were blown to irrecognizable pits dotted with dead. The
barbed wire had been cut like so much twine. Starting from the
Rue Tilleloy the Lincolns and the Berkshires were off the mark
first, with orders to swerve to right and left respectively as soon
as they had captured the first line of trenches, in order to let
the Royal Irish Rifles and the Rifle Brigade through to the
village. The Germans left alive in the trenches, half demented with
fright, surrounded by a welter of dead and dying men, mostly
surrendered. The Berkshires were opposed with the utmost gallantry
by two German officers who had remained alone in a trench serving a
machine gun. But the lads from Berkshire made their way into that
trench and bayoneted the Germans where they stood, fighting to the
las