! This, in turn, expressed how varied
and immense is the material required for such operations. One had in
mind the cleaning up after some ghastly debauch. Shell-fragments were
mixed with the earth; piles of cartridge cases lay beside pools of
blood. Trench mortars poked their half-filled muzzles out of the toppled
trench walls. Bundles of rocket flares, empty ammunition boxes, steel
helmets crushed in by shell-fragments, gasbags, eye-protectors against
lachrymatory shells, spades, water bottles, unused rifle grenades, egg
bombs, long stick-handled German bombs, map cases, bits of German "K.K."
bread, rifles, the steel jackets of shells and unexploded shells of all
calibers were scattered about the field between the irregular welts of
chalky soil where shell fire had threshed them to bits.

The rifles and accoutrements of the fallen were being gathered in piles,
this being, too, a part of a prearranged system, as was the gathering of
the wounded and later of the dead who had worn them. Big, barelegged
forms of the sturdy Highland regiment which would not halt for a machine
gun were being brought in and laid in a German communication trench
which had only to be closed to make a common grave, each identification
disk being kept as a record of where the body lay. Another communication
trench near by was reserved for German dead who were being gathered at
the same time as the British. In life the foes had faced each other
across No Man's Land. In death they were also separated.

Up to the first-line German trenches, of course, there were only British
dead, those who had fallen in the charge. It was this that made it seem
as if the losses had been all on one side. In the German trenches the
entries on the other side of the ledger appeared; and on the fields and
in the communication trenches lay green figures. Over that open space
they were scattered green dots; again, where they had run for cover to a
wood's edge, they lay thick as they had dropped under the fire of a
machine gun which the British had brought into action. A fierce game of
hare and hounds had been played. Both German and British dead lay facing
in the same direction when they were in the open, the Germans in
retreat, the British in pursuit. An officer called attention to this
grim proof that the initiative was with the British.

By the number of British dead lying in No Man's Land or by the blood
clots when the bodies had been removed, it was possible to tel