of flat ground beyond some of those zigzag lines of trenches
little black things were scurrying forward. They were not bunched
together in close groups, but scattered. Some of them seemed to
hesitate, and then to fall and lie where they fell, others hurrying on
until they disappeared in the drifting clouds.

It was the foremost line of our infantry attack, led by the bombers.
The Germans were firing tempests of shells. Some of them were curiously
colored, of a pinkish hue, or with orange-shaped puffs of vivid green.
They were poison-shells giving out noxious gases. All the chemistry of
death was poured out on both sides--and through it went the men of the
Midland Division.

The attack on the right was delivered by a brigade of Staffordshire men,
who advanced in four lines toward the Big Willie trench which formed the
southeast side of the Hohenzollern redoubt. The leading companies, who
were first over our own parapets, made a quick rush, half blinded by
the smoke and the gaseous vapors which filled the air, and were at once
received by a deadly fire from many machine-guns. It swept their ranks,
and men fell on all sides. Others ran on in little parties flung out in
extended order.

Young officers behaved with desperate gallantry, and as they fell
cheered their men on, while others ran forward shouting, followed by
numbers which dwindled at every yard, so that only a few reached the Big
Willie trench in the first assault.

A bombing-party of North Staffordshire men cleared thirty yards of the
trench by the rapidity with which they flung their hand-grenades at the
German bombers who endeavored to keep them out, and again and again they
kept at bay a tide of field-gray men, who swarmed up the communication
trenches, by a series of explosions which blew many of them to bits
as bomb after bomb was hurled into their mass. Other Germans followed,
flinging their own stick-bombs.

The Staffordshires did not yield until nearly every man was wounded and
many were killed. Even then they retreated yard by yard, still flinging
grenades almost with the rhythm of a sower who scatters his seed, each
motion of the hand and arm letting go one of those steel pomegranates
which burst with the noise of a high-explosive shell.

The survivors fell back to the other side of a barricade made in the Big
Willie trench by some of their men behind. Behind them again was another
barrier, in case the first should be rushed.

It seemed as if