mbe was in some way associated with
Springfield and St. Mabyn; everything pointed to that fact.
Springfield's evident fear, St. Mabyn's anxiety, added to Edgecumbe's
strange behaviour when he heard the peculiar cry, and saw Springfield's
face, made me sure that in some way these men's lives were bound
together, in a way I could not understand.

CHAPTER XII

THE STRUGGLE ON THE SOMME

I was not fated to hear the end of Edgecumbe's story. I had barely
finished reading the letter, when events happened in quick succession
which made it impossible for me to hear those things which he declared
made all life new to him.

It must be remembered that we were in the early part of July, when the
great battle of the Somme was gaining intensity at every hour, and when
private experiences were at a discount. Each day the tornado of the
great guns became more and more terrible, the air was full of the
shrieks of shells, while the constant pep-pep-pep of machine-guns
almost became monotonous. Village after village south of the Ancre
fell into our hands, thousands of German prisoners were taken, while
deadly fighting was the order of the day. It is no use trying to
describe it, it cannot be described. Incidents here and there can be
visualized, and to an extent made plain by words; but the movement as a
whole, the constant roar of guns, the shriek of shells, the sulphur of
explosives, the march of armies, the bringing in of prisoners, and our
own wounded men, cover too vast a field for any one picture.

It was not one battle, it was a hundred battles, and each battle was
more intense than the other. Position after position was taken, some
of which were lost again, only to be retaken, amidst the thunder of
guns and the groans of dying men.

If ever Tennyson's martial poem were true, it was true in that great
struggle. Not that cavalry had much to do with it, neither was there
any pageantry or any of the panoply of war. It was all too grim, too
ghastly, too sordid for that. And yet there was a pageantry of which
Tennyson never dreamed. The boom of guns, the weird light of the star
shells, the sulphurous atmosphere, the struggle of millions, formed a
pageant so Homeric, and on such an awful scale, that imagination reels
before it.

It was towards the middle of July when my battalion was ordered south
of the Ancre. What had become of Edgecumbe I did not know, and it was
impossible to find out. Each battalion, each