t. 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.

[Illustration: CHARGING ON GERMAN TRENCHES IN GAS MASKS

Each British soldier carried two gas-proof helmets. At the first alarm
of gas the helmet was instantly adjusted, for breathing even a whiff of
the yellow cloud meant death or serious injury. This picture shows the
earlier type before the respirator mask was devised to keep up with
Germany's development of gas warfare.]

"The village was a sight that the men say they will never forget.
It looked as if an earthquake had struck it. The published
photographs do not give any idea of the indescribable mass of ruins
to which our guns reduced it. The chaos is so utter that the very
line of the streets is all bu