ottage, stared through his glasses at the confusion
of the fight for hour after hour until his eyes ached and his vision
swam. The Forward Officer had been there since daybreak, and because
no shells obviously aimed at his station had bombarded him--plenty of
chance ones had come very close, but of course they didn't count--he
was satisfied that he was reasonably secure, and told his Major back at
the Battery so over his telephone. The succession of attack and
counter-attack had ceased for the time being, and the Forward Officer
let his glasses drop and shut his aching eyes for a moment. But,
almost immediately, he had to open them and lift his head carefully, to
peer out over the top of the broken wall; for the sudden crash of
reopening rifle fire warned him that another move was coming. From far
out on his left, beyond the range of his vision, the fire began. It
beat down, wave upon wave, towards his front, crossed it, and went
rolling on beyond his right. The initiative came from the British
side, and, taking it as the prelude of an attack, developing perhaps
out of sight on his left, the Forward Officer called up his Battery and
quickened the rate of its fire upon the German line. In a few minutes
he caught a quick stir in the British line, a glimpse of the row of
khaki figures clambering from their trench and the flickering flash of
their bayonets--and in an instant the flat ground beyond the trench was
covered with running figures. They made a fair target that the German
gunners, rifles, and maxims were quick to leap upon. The German trench
streamed fire, the German shells--shrapnel and high-explosive--blew
gaping rents in the running line. The line staggered and flinched,
halted, recovered, and went on again, leaving the ground behind it
dotted with sprawling figures. The space covered by the Forward
Officer's zone was flat and bare of cover clear to the German trench
two hundred yards away. It was too deadly a stretch for that gallant
line to cover; and before it was half-way across, it faltered again,
hung irresolute, and flung itself prone to ground. The level edge of
the German trench suddenly became serrated with bobbing heads,
flickered with moving figures, and the next moment was hidden by the
swarm of men that leaped from it and came charging across the open.
This line too withered and wilted under the fire that smote it, but it
gathered itself and hurled on again. The Forward Officer called d