was a second roar and a
wild upheaval of soil when the left group of mines destroyed two more of
the German craters and knocked out the machine-gun.

The moment for the infantry attack had come, and the men were ready.
The first to get away were two lieutenants of the 9th Loyal North
Lancashires, who rushed forward with their assaulting-parties to the
remaining crater on the extreme left, which had not been blown up.

With little opposition from dazed and terror-stricken Germans, bayoneted
as they scrambled out of the chaotic earth, our men flung
themselves into those smoking pits and were followed immediately by
working-parties, who built up bombing posts with earth and sand-bags on
the crater lip and began to dig out communication trenches leading to
them. The assaulting-parties of the Lancashire Fusiliers were away at
the first signal, and were attacking the other groups of craters under
heavy fire.

The Germans were shaken with terror because the explosion of the mines
had killed and wounded a large number of them, and through the darkness
there rang out the cheers of masses of men who were out for blood.
Through the darkness there now glowed a scarlet light, flooding all that
turmoil of earth and men with a vivid, red illumination, as flare after
flare rose high into the sky from several points of the German line.
Later the red lights died down, and then other rockets were fired,
giving a green light to this scene of war.

The German gunners were now at work in answer to those beacons of
distress, and with every caliber of gun from howitzers to minenwerfers
they shelled our front-lines for two hours and killed for vengeance.
They were too late to stop the advance of the assaulting troops, who
were fighting in the craters against groups of German bombers who tried
to force their way up to the rescue of a position already lost. One of
our officers leading the assault on one of the craters on the right was
killed very quickly, but his men were not checked, and with individual
resolution and initiative, and the grit of the Lancashire man in a tight
place, fought on grimly, and won their purpose.

A young lieutenant fell dead from a bullet wound after he had directed
his men to their posts from the lip of a new mine-crater, as coolly as
though he were a master of ceremonies in a Lancashire ballroom.
Another, a champion bomb-thrower, with a range of forty yards, flung
his hand-grenades at the enemy with untiring ski