fine observation of the enemy's lines above Martinpuich and Courcellette
away to Bapaume. For that reason the Germans were ordered to hold it at
all costs, and many German batteries had registered on it to blast our
men out if they gained a foothold on our side of the slope or theirs.

So High Wood became another hell, on a day of great battle--September
14, 1916--when for the first time tanks were used, demoralizing the
enemy in certain places, though they were too few in number to strike
a paralyzing blow. The Londoners gained part of High Wood at frightful
cost and then were blown out of it. Other divisions followed them and
found the wood stuffed with machine-guns which they had to capture
through hurricanes of bullets before they crouched in craters amid dead
Germans and dead English, and then were blown out like the Londoners,
under shell-fire, in which no human life could stay for long.

The 7th Division was cut up there. The 33d Division lost six thousand
men in an advance against uncut wire in the wood, which they were told
was already captured.

Hundreds of men were vomiting from the effect of gas-shells, choking and
blinded. Behind, the transport wagons and horses were smashed to bits.

The divisional staffs were often ignorant of what was happening to
the fighting-men when the attack was launched. Light signals, rockets,
heliographing, were of small avail through the dust--and smoke-clouds.
Forward observing officers crouching behind parapets, as I often saw
them, and sometimes stood with them, watched fires burning, red rockets
and green, gusts of flame, and bursting shells, and were doubtful what
to make of it all. Telephone wires trailed across the ground for miles,
were cut into short lengths by shrapnel and high explosive. Accidents
happened as part of the inevitable blunders of war. It was all a vast
tangle and complexity of strife.

On July 17th I stood in a tent by a staff-officer who was directing a
group of heavy guns supporting the 3d Division. He was tired, as I
could see by the black lines under his eyes and tightly drawn lips. On a
camp-table in front of him, upon which he leaned his elbows, there was a
telephone apparatus, and the little bell kept ringing as we talked. Now
and then a shell burst in the field outside the tent, and he raised his
head and said: "They keep crumping about here. Hope they won't tear this
tent to ribbons....That sounds like a gas-shell."

Then he turned to the t