and I
remember a lump of mud falling on the writing-pad and making a huge
smear, and explaining to her what the smear meant. As it happened,
too, I was able to send her Paul Edgecumbe's photograph. It was not a
very good one; it had been produced by one of his comrades who was an
amateur photographer. But it gave a fair idea of him. I obtained it
from him the last evening we were together. I did not tell her that he
was missing, even although my fears concerning him were very grave; I
thought it better not;--why, I don't know.

At length the great first of July arrived, and it was impossible to
think of anything clearly. For days there had been a cannonade such as
the world had never witnessed before; the whole countryside shook, the
air was thick with shrieking shells, the ground trembled with bursting
bombs. Every breath one drew was poison; the acrid smells of high
explosives were everywhere. Then, after days of bombardment, which I
will not try to describe, for it beggars all the language I ever
learnt, the attack commenced.

I have been sitting here trying to conjure up a picture of all I saw
that day, trying to find words in order to give some general impression
of what took place; but I simply can't. As I look back now, it only
seems a combination of a vast mad-house and a vast charnel-house. I
have confused memories of bodies of men creeping up behind deadly
barrages; I can see shells tearing up great holes in the earth, and
scattering mud and stones around them. I can see, too, where trenches
were levelled, just as I have seen pits which children make on the
seashore levelled by the incoming tide. Now and then there come back
to my mind dim, weird pictures of Germans crawling out of their
dug-outs, holding up their hands, and piteously crying, 'Kamerad!
Kamerad!'

I have recollections, too, of the great awkward tanks toiling along
their cumbersome way, smashing down whatever opposed them, and spitting
out flame and death on every hand. But I can record nothing. Men talk
about the history of this war being written some day; it never will
be,--the whole thing is too tremendous, too ghastly.

Personally, there are only a few incidents which I can recall clearly.
In the main, the struggle comes back to me as a series of bewildering,
chaotic, and incomplete events. Scraps of conversation come back to
me, too, and those scraps have neither sequence nor meaning.

'Fricourt taken, is it?'

'Yes,