remainder would follow.

[2] What we thought was a road or sandhill I afterwards found to be the
upturned edge of one of the two giant mine craters, south of La
Boiselle.

Not all of them. Some there were who did not stir with the rest. Other
figures came running up, heads down into it, often standing out black
against white bursts of chalk dust. I saw one gallant fellow racing up
quite alone, never stopping, running as a man runs a flat race. But
there were an increasing number who never moved. And, though we watched
them for an hour, they were still there motionless at the end of it.

For thirty minutes batches continued to come up. We could see them
building up a line a little farther up the hill, where another bank gave
cover. Then movement stopped and our heavy shell-bursts in La Boiselle
began again. The whole affair was being repeated a step farther forward.
The last we saw was the men leaping over the bank and down into the
space between them and the village.

This morning we went to the same view point. The firing had gone well
beyond Fricourt Wood. They were German shells which were now falling on
the smoking site of La Boiselle.

On the white bank there still lay twelve dark figures.




CHAPTER XIII