te." He did not even have
to touch a pushbutton to turn on the current. He had set four as zero.

I am not going to speak of suspense before the attack as being in the
very air and so forth. I felt it personally, but the Germans did not
feel it or, at least, the British did not want them to feel it. There
was no more sign of an earthly storm brewing as one looked at the field
than of a thunderstorm as one looked at the sky. Perfect soporific
tranquillity possessed the surroundings except for shell-bursts, and
their meagerness intensified the aspect, strangely enough, on that
battlefield where I had never seen a quieter afternoon since the Somme
offensive had begun. One could ask nothing better than that the
tranquillity should put the Germans to sleep. To the staff expert,
however, the dead world lived without the sight of men. Every square rod
of ground had some message.

Of course, I knew what was coming at four o'clock, but I was amazed at
its power and accuracy when it did come--this improved method of
artillery preparation, this patent curtain of fire. An outburst of
screaming shells overhead that became a continuous, roaring sweep like
that of a number of endless railroad trains in the air signified that
the guns which had been idle were all speaking. Every one by scattered
practice shots had registered on the German first-line trench at the
point where its shell-bursts would form its link in the chain of
bursts. Over the wavy line of chalk for the front of the attack broke
the flashes of cracking shrapnel jackets, whose bullets were whipping up
spurts of chalk like spurts of dust on a road from a hailstorm.

As the gun-blasts began I saw some figures rise up back of the German
trench. I judged that they were the relief coming up or a working party
that had been under cover. These Germans had to make a quick decision:
Would they try a leap for the dugouts or a leap to the rear? They
decided on flight. A hundred-yard sprint and they would be out of that
murderous swath laid so accurately on a narrow belt. They ran as men
will only run from death. No goose-stepping or "after you, sir" limited
their eagerness. I had to smile at their precipitancy and as some
dropped it was hard to realize that they had fallen from death or
wounds. They seemed only manikins in a pantomime.

Then a lone figure stepped up out of a communication trench just back of
the German first line. This tall officer, who could see nothing betwee