tance, and for a full
five minutes the fight raged and swayed in the open between the
trenches and among the wire entanglements. The men who fell were
trampled, squirming, underfoot in the bloody mire and mud; the fighters
stabbed and hacked and struck at short arm-length, fell even to using
fists and fingers when the press was too close for weapon play and
swing.

But the attack died out at last without the German entanglements being
passed or their earthwork being reached. Here and there an odd man had
scrambled and torn a way through the wire, only to fall on or before
the parapet. Others hung limp or writhing feebly to free themselves
from the clutching hooks of the wire. Both sides withdrew, panting and
nursing their dripping wounds, to the shelter of their trenches, and
both left their dead sprawled in the trampled ooze or stayed to help
their wounded crawling painfully back to cover. Immediately the
British set about rebuilding their shattered trench and parapet; but
before they had well begun the spades had to be flung down again and
the rifles snatched to repel another fierce assault. This time a storm
of bombs, hand grenades, rifle grenades, and every other fiendish
device of high-explosives, preceded the attack. The trench was racked
and rent and torn, sections were solidly blown in, and other sections
were flung out bodily in yawning crevasses and craters. From end to
end the line was wrapped in billowing clouds of reeking smoke, and
starred with bursts of fire. The defenders flattened themselves close
against the forward parapet that shook and trembled beneath them like a
live thing under the rending blasts. The rifles still cracked up and
down the line; but, in the main, the soaking, clay-smeared men held
still and hung on, grimly waiting and saving their full magazines for
the rush they knew would follow. It came at last, and the men breathed
a sigh of relief at the escape it meant from the rain of
high-explosives. It was their turn now, and the roar of their
rifle-fire rang out and the bomb-throwers raised themselves to hurl
their carefully-saved missiles on the advancing mass. The mass reeled
and split and melted under the fire, but fresh troops were behind and
pushing it on, and once more it flooded in on the trench. . . .

Again the British trench had become German, although here and there
throughout its length knots of men still fought on, unheeding how the
fight had gone elsewhere in