ip on nerves
hideously strained by the rack of this suspense. The words, "Steady,
lads." were spoken down the ranks by young lieutenants and sergeants.
The sounds of men whispering, a cough here and there, a word of command,
the clink of bayonets, the cracking of twigs under heavy boots, the
shuffle of troops getting into line, would not carry with any loudness
to German ears.

The men deployed before dawn broke, waiting for the preliminary
bombardment which would smash a way for them. The officers struck
matches now and then to glance at their wrist-watches, set very
carefully to those of the gunners. Then our artillery burst forth with
an enormous violence of shell-fire, so that the night was shattered with
the tumult of it. Guns of every caliber mingled their explosions,
and the long screech of the shells rushed through the air as though
thousands of engines were chasing one another madly through a vast
junction in that black vault.

The men listened and waited. As soon as the guns lengthened their fuses
the infantry advance would begin. Their nerves were getting jangled. It
was just the torture of human animals. There was an indrawing of breath
when suddenly the enemy began to fire rockets, sending up flares which
made white waves of light. If they were seen! There would be a shambles.

But the smoke of all the bursting shells rolled up in a thick veil,
hiding those mining lads who stared toward the illuminations above the
black vapors and at the flashes which seemed to stab great rents in the
pall of smoke. "It was a jumpy moment," said the colonel of the Durhams,
and the moment lengthened into minutes.

Then the time came. The watch hands pointed to the second which had been
given for the assault to begin, and instantly, to the tick, the guns
lifted and made a curtain of fire round the Chateau of Hooge, beyond the
Menin road, six hundred yards away.

"Time!"

The company officers blew their whistles, and there was a sudden clatter
from trench-spades slung to rifle-barrels, and from men girdled with
hand-grenades, as the advancing companies deployed and made their first
rush forward. The ground had been churned up by our shells, and the
trenches had been battered into shapelessness, strewn with broken wire
and heaps of loose stones and fragments of steel.

It seemed impossible that any German should be left alive in this
quagmire, but there was still a rattle of machine-guns from holes and
hillocks. Not fo