ht and left respectively as soon as they had captured the first line
of trenches, in order to let the Royal Irish Rifles and the Rifle
Brigade through to the village. The Germans left alive in the trenches,
half demented with fright, surrounded by a welter of dead and dying men,
mostly surrendered. The Berkshires were opposed with the utmost
gallantry by two German officers who had remained alone in a trench
serving a machine gun. But the lads from Berkshire made their way into
that trench and bayoneted the Germans where they stood, fighting to the
last. The Lincolns, against desperate resistance, eventually occupied
their section of the trench and then waited for the Irishmen and the
Rifle Brigade to come and take the village ahead of them. Meanwhile the
second Thirty-ninth Garhwalis on the right had taken their trenches with
a rush and were away towards the village and the Biez Wood.

"Things had moved so fast that by the time the troops were ready to
advance against the village the artillery had not finished its work. So,
while the Lincolns and the Berks assembled the prisoners who were
trooping out of the trenches in all directions, the infantry on whom
devolved the honor of capturing the village, waited. One saw them
standing out in the open, laughing and cracking jokes amid the terrific
din made by the huge howitzer shells screeching overhead and bursting in
the village, the rattle of machine guns all along the line, and the
popping of rifles. Over to the right where the Garhwalis had been
working with the bayonet, men were shouting hoarsely and wounded were
groaning as the stretcher-bearers, all heedless of bullets, moved
swiftly to and fro over the shell-torn ground.

"There was bloody work in the village of Neuve Chapelle. The capture of
a place at the bayonet point is generally a grim business, in which
instant, unconditional surrender is the only means by which bloodshed, a
deal of bloodshed, can be prevented. If there is individual resistance
here and there the attacking troops cannot discriminate. They must go
through, slaying as they go such as oppose them (the Germans have a
monopoly of the finishing-off of wounded men), otherwise the enemy's
resistance would not be broken, and the assailants would be sniped and
enfiladed from hastily prepared strongholds at half a dozen different
points.

"The village was a sight that the men say they will never forget. It
looked as if an earthquake had struck it. The