t with flashes. Some forward ones who had become eager
were at the edge of the area of dust-spatters from shrapnel bullets in
the white chalk. Didn't they know that another twenty yards meant death?
Was their methodical phlegm such that they acted entirely by rule? No,
they knew their part. They stopped and stood waiting. Others were on the
second of the five minutes' allowance as suddenly all the flashes ceased
and nothing remained over the trench but the mantle of smoke. The
barrage had been lifted from the first to the second-line German trench
as you lift the spray of a hose from one flower bed to another.

This was the moment of action for the men of the charge, not one of whom
had yet fired a shot. Each man was distinctly outlined against the white
background as, bayonets glistening and hands drawn back with bombs ready
to throw, they sprang forward to be at the mouths of the dugouts before
the Germans came out. Some leaped directly into the trench, others ran
along the parapet a few steps looking for a vantage point or throwing a
bomb as they went before they descended. It was a quick, urgent,
hit-and-run sort of business and in an instant all were out of sight and
the fighting was man to man, with the guns of both sides keeping their
hands off this conflict under ground. The entranced gaze for a moment
leaving that line of chalk saw a second British wave advancing in the
same way as the first from the British first-line trench.

"All in along the whole line. Bombing their way forward there!" said
Howell, with matter-of-fact understanding of the progress of events.

I blinked tired eyes and once more pressed them to the twelve diameters
of magnification, every diameter having full play in the clear light. I
saw nothing but little bursts of smoke rising out of the black streak in
the chalk which was the trench itself, each one from an egg of high
explosive thrown at close quarters but not numerous enough to leave any
doubt of the result and very evidently against a few recalcitrants who
still held out.

Next, a British soldier appeared on the parapet and his attitude was
that of one of the military police directing traffic at a busy
crossroads close to the battle front. His part in the carefully worked
out system was shown when a figure in green came out of the trench with
hands held up in the approved signal of surrender the world over. The
figure was the first of a file with hands up--and very much in earnest