attalion. We soon learned that all hands were going
over, and after that we felt better.

We got our equipment on and started up to the second line. It was
right here that I got my first dose of real honest-to-goodness
modern war. The big push had been on all summer, and the whole of
the Somme district was battered and smashed.

Going up from Mill Street there were no communication trenches. We
were right out in the open, exposed to rifle and machine-gun fire
and to shrapnel, and the Boches were fairly raining it in on the
territory they had been pushed back from and of which they had the
range to an inch. We went up under that steady fire for a full
hour. The casualties were heavy, and the galling part of it was
that we couldn't hurry, it was so dark. Every time a shell burst
overhead and the shrapnel pattered in the dirt all about, I kissed
myself good-by and thought of the baked beans at home. Men kept
falling, and I wished I hadn't enlisted.

When we finally got up to the trench, believe me, we didn't need
any orders to get in. We relieved the Black Watch, and they
encouraged us by telling us they had lost over half their men in
that trench, and that Fritz kept a constant fire on it. They didn't
need to tell us. The big boys were coming over all the time.

The dead here were enough to give you the horrors. I had never seen
so many before and never saw so many afterwards in one place. They
were all over the place, both Germans and our own men. And in all
states of mutilation and decomposition.

There were arms and legs sticking out of the trench sides. You
could tell their nationality by the uniforms. The Scotch
predominated. And their dead lay in the trenches and outside and
hanging over the edges. I think it was here that I first got the
real meaning of that old quotation about the curse of a dead man's
eye. With so many lying about, there were always eyes staring at
you.

Sometimes a particularly wide-staring corpse would seem to follow
you with his gaze, like one of these posters with the pointing
finger that they use to advertise Liberty Bonds. We would cover
them up or turn them over. Here and there one would have a scornful
death smile on his lips, as though he were laughing at the folly of
the whole thing.

The stench here was appalling. That frightful, sickening smell that
strikes one in the face like something tangible. Ugh! I immediately
grew dizzy and faint and had a mad desire to run. I think i