No. 7 Platoon jumped up and advanced into the open, followed by the
third wave.

I extended my runners and followed.

What followed next beggars description. As I write these lines my hand
hesitates to describe the hell that was let loose upon those men. No
eye but mine could take in the picture so completely.

Will the world ever know what these men faced and fought
against--these men of the City of London? Not unless I tell it, for I
alone saw all that happened that day; and my hand alone, weak and
incapable though it feels, is the only one that can do it.

Barely had I emerged from the wood with my ten runners when a perfect
hurricane of shells were hurled at us, machine-guns from several
points spraying their deadly fire backward and forward, dropping men
like corn before the reaper. From all three sides of the square a
hurricane of fire was poured into the centre of the square upon us, as
we emerged from the wood.

In far less time than it takes to record it, the attacking waves
became a mere sprinkling of men. They went on for a yard or two, and
then all seemed to vanish; and even my runners, whom I had extended
into line, were dropping fast.

The situation was critical, desperate. Fearful lest the attack should
fail, I ran forward, and collecting men here and there from
shell-holes where some had taken refuge, I formed them into a fresh
firing-line, and once more we pressed forward.

Again and again the line was thinned; and again the survivors,
undaunted and unbeaten, reformed and pressed forward.

Men laughed, men cried in the desperation of the moment. We were
grappling with death; we were dodging it, cheating it; we were mad,
blindly hysterical. What did anything matter? Farther and farther into
the inferno we must press, at any cost, at any cost; leaping, jumping,
rushing, we went from shell-hole to shell-hole; and still the fire
continued with unrelenting fury.

I jumped into a shell-hole, and found myself within ten yards of my
objective. My three remaining runners jumped in alongside of me. They
were Arnold, Dobson, and Wilkinson.

Arnold was done for! He looked up at me with eyes staring and face
blanched, and panted out that he could go no farther, and I realised
that I could count on him no more.

I glanced to the left, just in time to see three Germans not five
yards away, and one after the other jump from a shell-hole which
formed a sort of bay to their trench, and run away.

Wish