pened, and the crews poured out and began to pile sandbags in front of the machines so that when d

pt the sky clean. There wasn't a cloud by eight o'clock. The sun shone bright,

blanks provided for the purpose in the back of the pay books. We judged from the number of dead and the evident punishment other divisions had taken there that

nearly as I

d to be about ten thousand Germans in that wood and in the surrounding supports. The positions are mostly of concrete with hundreds of machine guns and field artillery. Our heavies have for some reason made no impression on them,

on the world when the sky pilo

nd he had the military cross for bravery. He passed down the line, giving us a slap on the back or a hand grip and started us singing. No go

if he was along, and you knew that he'd be willing to come i

nds of guns, both French and English, in fact every available gun within a radius of fifteen miles, poured it in. In the

op. I was frightfully nervous and scared, but tried not to show it. An offic

e of them looked positively green. They smoked f

up to a large extent in his concrete dug-outs. I looked over the top once or twice and wondered if I, too, would be lying there unburied with the

g on the side of the parapet to make our climb over when the signal came. Some of the men gave their bayonets a last fond rub, and I looked to my bolt action to see that it worked well. I had ten rounds in the magazine, and I

air to be out of range it must have been a wonderful spect

red poles of what had once been a forest. This position and the supports to the left and rear of it beg

rom the second trench, an

ain, tipped and reeled and listed, and sometimes seemed as though they must upset; but they came up each time and wen

iful creeping barrage preceded us. Row after row of shells burst at just the right distance ahead, spewing gobs of smoke a

pt off the machine-gun bullets, but not, the shrapnel. It was breaking over us in clouds. I felt the stun

there diagonally to the right and forward I glimpsed a b

clawing at his throat as he reeled forward, falling. I saw Vickers

anced on his finger, smiling, pulling his men along like a drum major. A shell or something

rsing machine gun raked the mud, throwing up handfuls, and I heard the gruff "row, row" o

n I got to the front trenches-if we ever did. There wou

en we

n's Land behind the tanks took over fi

we reached the Boche front trenches a strange thing happened. There was no fight worth mentioning

s in air, moved slowly on. And then the Graybacks swarmed up out of shelters and d

of thirty to me. We searched them rapidly, cut their suspenders and bel

British ground, I looked back and saw the irresistible tanks smashing their way through

st directly over our party and seven of the prisoners were killed and half a dozen wounded. I myself was unscratched. I

in but couldn't find my battalion. I threw in with a batta

s than twenty-nine. Company B, however, had been practically wiped out, losing all but thirteen men out of two hundred. The other two compan

us would have if it had

n to be taken. They had to fall back but held the wood and the heights. Three of the tanks were stalled in the f

hey returned to our lines. The tanks had proved themselves, not only