nd
fed--a regular meal with plenty of everything, and all good. It
looked rather like giving a condemned man a hearty meal, but grub
is always acceptable to a soldier.

After that we blacked our faces. This is always done to prevent the
whiteness of the skin from showing under the flare lights. Also to
distinguish your own men when you get to the Boche trench.

Then we wrote letters and gave up our identification discs and were
served with persuader sticks or knuckle knives, and with "Mills"
bombs.

The persuader is a short, heavy bludgeon with a nail-studded head.
You thump Fritz on the head with it. Very handy at close quarters.
The knuckle knife is a short dagger with a heavy brass hilt that
covers the hand. Also very good for close work, as you can either
strike or stab with it.

We moved up to the front trenches at about half-past ten. At zero
minus ten, that is, ten minutes of eleven, our artillery opened up.
It was the first bombardment I had ever been under, and it seemed
as though all the guns in the world were banging away. Afterwards I
found that it was comparatively light, but it didn't seem so then.

The guns were hardly started when there was a sound like escaping
steam. Jerry leaned over and shouted in my ear: "There goes the
gas. May it finish the blighters."

Blofeld came dashing up just then, very much excited because he
found we had not put on our masks, through some slip-up in the
orders. We got into them quick. But as it turned out there was no
need. There was a fifteen-mile wind blowing, which carried the gas
away from us very rapidly. In fact it blew it across the Boche
trenches so fast that it didn't bother them either.

The barrage fire kept up right up to zero, as per schedule. At
thirty seconds of eleven I looked at my watch and the din was at
its height. At exactly eleven it stopped short. Fritz was still
sending some over, but comparatively there was silence. After the
ear-splitting racket it was almost still enough to hurt.

And in that silence over the top we went.

Lanes had been cut through our wire, and we got through them
quickly. The trenches were about one hundred twenty yards apart and
we still had nearly one hundred to go. We dropped and started to
crawl. I skinned both my knees on something, probably old wire, and
both hands. I could feel the blood running into my puttees, and my
rifle bothered me as I was afraid of jabbing Jerry, who was just
ahead of me as first bay