own
the shortening ranges to the guns, and the answering shrapnel fell
fiercely on the German line and tore it to fragments--but the fragments
still advanced. The remnant of the British line rose and flung forward
to meet it, and as the two clashed the supports from either side poured
out to help. As the dense mass of Germans emerged, and knitted into
close formation, the Forward Officer reeled off swift orders to the
telephone. The shrieking tempest of his shells fell upon the mass,
struck and slew wholesale, struck and slew again. The mass shivered
and broke; but although part of it vanished back under the cover of the
trench, although another part lay piled in a wreckage of dead and
wounded, a third part straggled forward and charged into the fight.
The British line was overborne, and pushed struggling back until new
supports brought it fresh life and turned the tide again. The Germans
surviving the charge were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and the
Forward Officer, lifting his fire and pouring it on the German trench,
checked for the moment any further rush of reinforcements. The British
line ran forward to a field track running parallel to the trenches and
nearly midway between them, flung itself down to escape the bullets
that stormed across and began, as rapidly as the men's cramped position
would allow, to dig themselves in. To their right and left the field
track sank a foot or two below the surface of the field, and this
scanty but precious shelter had allowed the rest of the line to stop
half-way across and hold on to get its breath and allow a constant
spray of supports to dash across the open and reinforce it. Now, the
centre, where the track ran bare and flat across the field, plied
frantic shovels to heap up some sort of cover that would allow them
also to hang on in conformation of the whole line and gather breath and
reinforcements for the next rush.

The Germans saw plainly enough what was the plan, and took instant
steps to upset it. Their first and best chance was to thrust hard at
the weak and ill-protected centre, overwhelm it and then roll up the
lines to right and left of it.

A tornado of shell fire ushered in the new assault. The shells burst
in running crashes up and down the advanced line, and up and down the
British trench behind it; driving squalls of shrapnel swept the ground
between the two, and, in addition, a storm of rifle and machine-gun
bullets rained along the scan