.

No men moved about this ground. Yet thousands of men were hidden about
us in the ditches, waiting for another counter-attack behind storms of
fire. The only moving things were the shells which vomited up earth and
smoke and steel as they burst in all directions over the whole zone.
We were shelling Hulluch and Haisnes and Fosse 8 with an intense,
concentrated fire, and the enemy was retaliating by scattering
shells over the town of Loos and our new line between Hill 70 and the
chalk-pit, and the whole length of our line from north to south.

Only two men moved about above the trenches. They were two London boys
carrying a gas-cylinder, and whistling as though it were a health resort
under the autumn sun... It was not a health resort. It stank of death,
from piles of corpses, all mangled and in a mush of flesh and bones
lying around the Loos redoubt and all the ground in this neighborhood,
and for a long distance north.

Through the streets of Bethune streamed a tide of war: the transport
of divisions, gun-teams with their limber ambulance convoys,
ammunition wagons, infantry moving up to the front, despatch riders,
staff-officers, signalers, and a great host of men and mules and
motor-cars. The rain lashed down upon the crowds; waterproofs and
burberries and the tarpaulin covers of forage-carts streamed with water,
and the bronzed faces of the soldiers were dripping wet. Mud splashed
them to the thighs. Fountains of mud spurted up from the wheels
of gun-carriages. The chill of winter made Highlanders as well as
Indians--those poor, brave, wretched Indians who had been flung into
the holding attack on the canal at La Bassee, and mown down in the
inevitable way by shrapnel and machine-gun bullets--shiver in the wind.

Yet, in spite of rain and great death, there was a spirit of exultation
among many fighting-men. At last there was a break in the months of
stationary warfare. We were up and out of the trenches. The first proofs
of victory were visible there in a long line of German guns captured at
Loos, guarded on each side by British soldiers with fixed bayonets. Men
moving up did not know the general failure that had swamped a partial
success. They stared at the guns and said, "By God--we've got 'em going
this time!"

A group of French civilians gathered round them, excited at the sight.
Artillery officers examined their broken breech-blocks and their
inscriptions:

"Pro Gloria et Patria."

"Ultima ratio reg