varied by a multitude of bullets singing past like bees, and with the
additional thought ever present to the mind--when will the enemy's
barrage burst on you? When it does come, you do not hear it
coming--there is too much racket in the air for your ears to catch the
shell whistling down as you are accustomed to. There are big black
crashes and splashes near by, without warning--scarcely noticed at
first. In the charge itself men often do not notice other men hit--we,
looking on from far behind, did not notice that. A man may be slipping
in a shell-hole, or in the mud, or in some wire--often he gets up again
and runs on. It is only afterwards that you realise....

Across the mud space there were suddenly noticed a few grey helmets
watching--a long, long distance away. Then the grey helmets moved, and
other helmets moved, and bunched themselves up, and hurried about like a
disturbed hive, and settled into a line of men firing fast and coolly.
That was the German trench.

It was fairly packed already in one part. The rattle of fire grew
quickly. The chatter of one machine-gun--then another, and another, were
added to it. Our shells were bursting occasionally flat in the face of
the Germans--one big bearded fellow--they are close enough for those
details to be seen now--takes a low burst of our shrapnel full in his
eyes. A high-explosive shell bursts on the parapet, and down go three
others. But they are firing calmly through all this.

Three or four Germans suddenly get up from some hole in No Man's Land,
and bolt for their trench like rabbits. Within forty yards of the German
parapet the leading men in our line find themselves alone. The line has
dwindled to a few scanty groups. These are dropping suddenly--their
comrades cannot say whether they are taking cover in shell-holes, or