rip up yards of our makeshift defenses and kill half a dozen of our boys.
Sometimes we would groan aloud and pray to see a few German legs and arms
fly to the four winds as compensation. But no. We would wire back to
artillery headquarters: "For God's sake, send over a few shells, even one
shell, to silence this hell!" And day after day the same answer would come
back: "Heaven knows we are sorry, but you've had your allotment of shells
for to-day."

Perhaps one shell, or it may have been three, would have been the
ammunition ration of our particular front for the day.

It was nobody's fault at the moment of fighting. It lay perhaps between
those who had anticipated and prepared for war for forty years and those
who had neglected to foresee the possibility of such an enterprise. The
fact remained, we had no shells.

Every day our defenses were leveled. Every night we would crawl out, after
long hours spent flat on our stomachs, covered to the neck in mud and
blood, and endeavor to repair the damage. Every night we lost a few men;
every day we lost a few men, and still we held our ground.

The day casualties were the worst. The wounded men had to lie in the damp
and dirt until night came to shelter them; then some one would help, or if
that were not possible, the wounded would have to make his own pain-strewn
way back to a dressing station. During the day some one might discover that
he had developed a frozen toe. He could get no relief; he dare not attempt
to leave his partial shelter. The slightest movement, and the enemy would
have closed his career. By night his foot would be a fiery torture, and by
the time a doctor was near enough to help it would be a rotting mass of
gangrene, and one man more would be added to the list of permanent