n
walls of earth where he was, stood up in full view looking around as if
taking stock of the situation, deciding, perhaps, whether that smoke
barrage to his right now rolling out of the British trench was on the
real line of attack or was only for deception; observing and concluding
what his men, I judge, were never to know, for, as a man will when
struck a hard blow behind the knees, he collapsed suddenly and the earth
swallowed him up before the bursts of shrapnel smoke had become so thick
over the trench that it formed a curtain.

There must have been a shell a minute to the yard. Shrapnel bullets were
hissing into the mouths of dugouts; death was hugging every crevice,
saying to the Germans:

"Keep down! Keep out of the rain! If you try to get out with a machine
gun you will be killed! Our infantry is coming!"

XXIV

WATCHING A CHARGE

The British trench comes to life--The line goes forward--A modern
charge no chance for heroics--Machine-like forward movement--The most
wicked sound in a battle--The first machine gun--A beautiful
barrage--The dreaded "shorts"--The barrage lifts to the second
line--The leap into the trenches--Figures in green with hands
up--Captured from dugouts--A man who made his choice and paid the
price--German answering fire--Second part of the program--Again the
protecting barrage--Success--Waves of men advancing behind waves of
shell fire--Prisoners in good fettle--Brigadier-General Philip
Howell.

Now the British trench came to life. What seemed like a row of
khaki-colored washbasins bottom side up and fast to a taut string rose
out of the cut in the earth on the other side of the valley, and after
them came the shoulders and bodies of British soldiers who began
climbing over the parapet just as a man would come up the cellar stairs.
This was the charge.

Five minutes the barrage or curtain of fire was to last and five minutes
was the allotted time for these English soldiers to go from theirs to
the German trench which they were to take. So many paces to the minute
was the calculation of their rate of progress across that dreadful No
Man's Land, where machine guns and German curtains of fire had wrought
death in the preceding charge of July 1st.

Every detail of the men's equipment was visible as their full-length
figures appeared on the background of the gray-green slope. They were
entirely exposed to fire from the German trench. Any tyro with