ning of the
engagement, the narrator continues:

"Then hell broke loose. With a mighty, hideous, screeching burst of
noise, hundreds of guns spoke. The men in the front trenches were
deafened by the sharp reports of the field-guns spitting out their
shells at close range to cut through the Germans' barbed wire
entanglements. In some cases the trajectory of these vicious missiles
was so flat that they passed only a few feet above the British trenches.

"The din was continuous. An officer who had the curious idea of putting
his ear to the ground said it was as though the earth were being smitten
great blows with a Titan's hammer. After the first few shells had
plunged screaming amid clouds of earth and dust into the German
trenches, a dense pall of smoke hung over the German lines. The
sickening fumes of lyddite blew back into the British trenches. In some
places the troops were smothered in earth and dust or even spattered
with blood from the hideous fragments of human bodies that went hurtling
through the air. At one point the upper half of a German officer, his
cap crammed on his head, was blown into one of our trenches.

"Words will never convey any adequate idea of the horror of those five
and thirty minutes. When the hands of officers' watches pointed to five
minutes past eight, whistles resounded along the British lines. At the
same moment the shells began to burst farther ahead, for, by previous
arrangement, the gunners, lengthening their fuses, were 'lifting' on to
the village of Neuve Chapelle so as to leave the road open for our
infantry to rush in and finish what the guns had begun.

"The shells were now falling thick among the houses of Neuve Chapelle, a
confused mass of buildings seen reddish through the pillars of smoke and
flying earth and dust. At the sound of the whistle--alas for the bugle,
once the herald of victory, now banished from the fray!--our men
scrambled out of the trenches and hurried higgledy-piggledy into the
open. Their officers were in front. Many, wearing overcoats and carrying
rifles with fixed bayonets, closely resembled their men.

"It was from the center of our attacking line that the assault was
pressed home soonest. The guns had done their work well. The trenches
were blown to irrecognizable pits dotted with dead. The barbed wire had
been cut like so much twine. Starting from the Rue Tilleloy the Lincolns
and the Berkshires were off the mark first, with orders to swerve to
rig