crouched against the parapet and strained my muscles in a death-like
grip upon my rifle. As the hands on my watch showed two o'clock, a
blinding red flare lighted up the sky in our rear, then thunder,
intermixed with a sharp, whistling sound in the air over our heads.
The shells from our guns were speeding on their way toward the German
lines. With one accord the men sprang up on the fire step and looked
over the top in the direction of the German trenches. A line of
bursting shells lighted up No Man's Land. The din was terrific and the
ground trembled. Then, high above our heads we could hear a sighing
moan. Our big boys behind the line had opened up and 9.2's and 15-inch
shells commenced dropping into the German lines. The flash of the guns
behind the lines, the scream of the shells through the air, and the
flare of them, bursting, was a spectacle that put Pain's greatest
display into the shade. The constant pup, pup, of German machine guns
and an occasional rattle of rifle firing gave me the impression of a
huge audience applauding the work of the batteries.

Our eighteen-pounders were destroying the German barbed wire, while
the heavier stuff was demolishing their trenches and bashing in
dugouts or funk-holes.

Then Fritz got busy.

Their shells went screaming overhead, aimed in the direction of the
flares from our batteries. Trench mortars started dropping "Minnies"
in our front line. We clicked several casualties. Then they suddenly
ceased. Our artillery had taped or silenced them.

During the bombardment you could almost read a newspaper in our
trench. Sometimes in the flare of a shell-burst a man's body would be