"It must be the mine we charged at La Boisselle. The biggest that has
ever been."

It was a good guess. When, later in the battle, I stood by the crater of
that mine and looked into its gulf I wondered how many Germans had been
hurled into eternity when the earth had opened. The grave was big enough
for a battalion of men with horses and wagons, below the chalk of the
crater's lips. Often on the way to Bapaume I stepped off the road to
look into that white gulf, remembering the moment when I saw the gust of
flame that rent the earth about it.

VII

There was the illusion of victory on that first day of the Somme
battles, on the right of the line by Fricourt, and it was not until a
day or two later that certain awful rumors I had heard from wounded men
and officers who had attacked on the left up by Gommecourt, Thiepval,
and Serre were confirmed by certain knowledge of tragic disaster on that
side of the battle-line.

The illusion of victory, with all the price and pain of it, came to me
when I saw the German rockets rising beyond the villages of Mametz and
Montauban and our barrage fire lifting to a range beyond the first lines
of German trenches, and our support troops moving forward in masses to
captured ground. We had broken through! By the heroic assault of our
English and Scottish troops. West Yorks, Yorks and Lancs, Lincolns,
Durhams, Northumberland Fusiliers, Norfolks and Berkshires, Liverpools,
Manchesters, Gordons, and Royal Scots, all those splendid men I had
seen marching to their lines. We had smashed through the ramparts of the
German fortress, through that maze of earthworks and tunnels which had
appalled me when I saw them on the maps, and over which I had gazed
from time to time from our front-line trenches when those places seemed
impregnable. I saw crowds of prisoners coming back under escort, fifteen
hundred had been counted in the first day, and they had the look of a
defeated army. Our lightly wounded men, thousands of them, were shouting
and laughing as they came down behind the lines, wearing German caps and
helmets. From Amiens civilians straggled out along the roads as far as
they were allowed by military police, and waved hands and cheered those
boys of ours. "Vive l'Angleterre!" cried old men, raising their hats.
Old women wept at the sight of those gay wounded, the lightly touched,
glad of escape, rejoicing in their luck and in the glory of life which
was theirs still and crie