ards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252)
are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the
concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow
part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers
tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone,
mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The
tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.

In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion
shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into
immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth
on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us.
The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires
stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of
dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed
through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark
had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the
threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild
fascination. I was for a moment tempted to rise up and shout (p. 253)
across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the
shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that
intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a
violent hand; this in full view of the enemy's trench in a light that
illumined the place like a sun.

"Bill, Bill!" we muttered hoarsely.

"Well, blimey, that's a go," he said coughing and spitting. "What 'ave
I done, splunk on a dead 'un I flopped, a stinking corpse. 'E was
'uggin' me, kissin' me. Oh! nark the game, ole stiff 'un," said Bill,
addressing the ground where I could perceive a bundle of dark clothes,
striped with red and deep in the grass. "Talk about rotten eggs
burstin' on your jor; they're not in it."

The light of the star-shell waned and died away; the Corporal spoke to
Bill.

"Next time a light goes up you be flat; you're giving the whole damned
show away," the Corporal said. "If you're spotted it's all up with
us."

We fixed swords clamping them into the bayonet standards and lay flat
on the ground in the midst of dead bodies of French soldiers. Months
before the French endeavoured to take the German trenches and got (p. 254)
about half way