a bombardment made to prevent the keen ear of Fritz
detecting the throbbing of their engines.

By this time batteries had been and were being installed everywhere at
Pozieres where there was room to place a gun: like beavers the men were
working as busily as men could work, although they were constantly
subjected to the severest strafing; but on the Somme it seemed that
nobody minded. For my part I had the firm conviction that death would
come when it would come and not till then, and I went about my work
absolutely careless of any possible hurt. And I can positively testify
to the same state of mind in each one of my comrades,--not one of whom
seemed to think of his personal safety in any way whatsoever when there
was work to be done.

Here the British soldier's fatalism was exemplified in the superbest
manner!

On that same night that the tanks went forward again, I was detailed to
go to the trenches to assist the telephonist, who was hard pressed for
help, and in the morning I was in the front-line trench assisting the
Captain with his observation work. All the time on the Somme all hands
were busy doing something. Immediately after dawn, at five o'clock, the
guns belched forth with an ear-splitting, deafening roar and
simultaneously over the top appeared the five behemoths, one of them
passing within a few feet of me.

The gunfire from our pieces at this time was immensely superior to the
enemy's and his trenches had been flattened, but the wires still stood,
and here it was the tanks did the work. On they came! Rolling through
and making gaps 10 to 15 feet wide the Infantry plunging along in their
wake. Forgetting my orders to stay where I was, I hopped in with the
Infantry and reached Fritz' second-line trench.

"Gawd!" yelled a Tommy. "Wot the bloody 'ell will Fritz think of these
beauties? 'E'll think its Satan's advance guard!"

On and yet on they reeled and rolled, one of them dipping nose first
into a crater, and when I saw it going over the top of this huge hole my
heart gave a bound of fear, as I surely thought its usefulness was now
over. In this crater there were about 300 German soldiers when the tank
plunged into it, and under its huge bulk 75 of them had their lives
mashed out.

A spirit of wonderful fervor filled me as I saw that our behemoth was
not disturbed in the slightest by the fact that he had gone into a
crater; he continued to waddle all around the huge hole, his machine
guns playing