for
weeks, and during the long June days clouds of dust hung in the hot,
still air above the roads. For the roads all led towards the line, and
the tramp of men, and the rumble of wheels were unending. The
Battalion had long ago recovered from a hard and monotonous winter of
trench warfare. To each man there remained the joy of remembering days
and nights that were unpleasant--for it is a joy to remember, in the
comfort and happiness of to-day, the discomforts and sorrows of
yesterday. Now the sun was shining. Training was going on apace under
the pleasantest of conditions. They were a healthy family. Each man
felt his potentiality, and unconsciously boasted it in his every
action. Such was the feeling in the Battalion when the certainty of
conflict came. To everyone it was the "Big Push"--the mighty
Armageddon--of which all had thought and spoken during the winter of
waiting. There was no doubt as to the issue. Each man went about his
duties with an eye to an immediate and definite future. If anything he
gave greater care to his rifle. In his feeling the edge and point of
his bayonet, there was something of a caress. Now was the look in each
eye born of the lust of killing. It was the knowledge that on a bright
morning--now only a few hours distant--man would be matched against
man. "Justice of our cause may have been somewhere in our
sub-consciousness. Certainly it was not uppermost. To each man the
coming conflict savoured of individual mortal combat. The days of
waiting were gone. He was going forward to prove his manhood"--so
write two veterans of that fight.

The story of that morning is an epic. For every man it was the first
experience of "over the top." In sun-baked trenches everyone longed
for the zero hour, while the guns rolled and shells crashed with
ever-increasing intensity. Nothing was real. Men stood and waited as
if in a dream. They felt as if they were listening to the overture;
that soon the curtain would rise. Even when the guns ceased their roar
for a few moments towards the end, and in the death-like stillness was
heard the warbling of birds in "no man's land"--the grim reality of it
all was felt. With the lifting mist of the morning, the curtain
rose....

At 7.23 a.m. the Battalion started moving across "no man's land." When
the barrage lifted the men entered the enemy front line and the work
of the moppers-up soon began. The advance across the open was
splendidly carried out, all ranks behav