them were Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel on the
left side of the River Ancre, and Thiepval Wood on the right side of the
Ancre leading up to Thiepval Chateau on the crest of the cliff. These
were the hardest positions to attack, because of the rising ground and
the immense strength of the enemy's earthworks and tunneled defenses.
But our generals were confident that the gun power at their disposal
was sufficient to smash down that defensive system and make an easy way
through for the infantry. They were wrong. In spite of that tornado
of shell-fire which I had seen tearing up the earth, many tunnels were
still unbroken, and out of them came masses of German machine-gunners
and riflemen, when our infantry rose from their own trenches on that
morning of July 1st.

Our guns had shifted their barrage forward at that moment, farther ahead
of the infantry than was afterward allowed, the men being trained to
follow close to the lines of bursting shells, trained to expect a number
of casualties from their own guns--it needs some training--in order to
secure the general safety gained by keeping the enemy below ground until
our bayonets were round his dugouts.

The Germans had been trained, too, to an act of amazing courage. Their
discipline, that immense power of discipline which dominates men in the
mass, was strong enough to make them obey the order to rush through that
barrage of ours, that advancing wall of explosion and, if they lived
through it, to face our men in the open with massed machine-gun fire. So
they did; and as English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh battalions of our
assaulting divisions trudged forward over what had been No Man's Land,
machine-gun bullets sprayed upon them, and they fell like grass to the
scythe. Line after line of men followed them, and each line crumpled,
and only small groups and single figures, seeking comradeship, hurried
forward. German machine-gunners were bayoneted as their thumbs were
still pressed to their triggers. In German front-line trenches at the
bottom of Thiepval Wood, outside Beaumont Hamel and on the edge of
Gommecourt Park, the field-gray men who came out of their dugouts fought
fiercely with stick-bombs and rifles, and our officers and men, in
places where they had strength enough, clubbed them to death, stuck them
with bayonets, and blew their brains out with revolvers at short range.
Then those English and Irish and Scottish troops, grievously weak
because of all the dead a