giment is
only that of a little wheel, nor what is going on in all the huge area
of the sector. But, lost in the network of deeps where we go and come
without end, weary, harassed and stiff-jointed by prolonged halts,
stupefied by noise and delay, poisoned by smoke, we make out that our
artillery is becoming more and more active; the offensive seems to have
changed places.

* * * * *

Halt! A fire of intense and incredible fury was threshing the parapets
of the trench where we were halted at the moment: "Fritz is going it
strong; he's afraid of an attack, he's going dotty. Ah, isn't he
letting fly!"

A heavy hail was pouring over us, hacking terribly at atmosphere and
sky, scraping and skimming all the plain.

I looked through a loophole and saw a swift and strange vision. In
front of us, a dozen yards away at most, there were motionless forms
outstretched side by side--a row of mown-down soldiers--and the
countless projectiles that hurtled from all sides were riddling this
rank of the dead!

The bullets that flayed the soil in straight streaks amid raised
slender stems of cloud were perforating and ripping the bodies so
rigidly close to the ground, breaking the stiffened limbs, plunging
into the wan and vacant faces, bursting and bespattering the liquefied
eyes; and even did that file of corpses stir and budge out of line
under the avalanche.

We could hear the blunt sound of the dizzy copper points as they
pierced cloth and flesh, the sound of a furious stroke with a knife,
the harsh blow of a stick upon clothing. Above us rushed jets of shrill
whistling, with the declining and far more serious hum of ricochets.
And we bent our heads under the enormous flight of noises and voices.

"Trench must be cleared--Gee up!" We leave this most infamous corner of
the battlefield where even the dead are torn, wounded, and slain anew.

We turn towards the right and towards the rear. The communication
trench rises, and at the top of the gully we pass in front of a
telephone station and a group of artillery officers and gunners. Here
there is a further halt. We mark time, and hear the artillery observer
shout his commands, which the telephonist buried beside him picks up
and repeats: "First gun, same sight; two-tenths to left; three a
minute!"

Some of us have risked our heads over the edge of the bank and have
glimpsed for the space of the lightning's flash all the field of battle
round which