wrote pitiful letters to their people at home describing the horror of
those hours.

"We are quite shut off from the rest of the world," wrote one of them.
"Nothing comes to us. No letters. The English keep such a barrage on our
approaches it is terrible. To-morrow evening it will be seven days since
this bombardment began. We cannot hold out much longer. Everything is
shot to pieces."

Thirst was one of their tortures. In many of the tunneled shelters there
was food enough, but the water could not be sent up. The German soldiers
were maddened by thirst. When rain fell many of them crawled out and
drank filthy water mixed with yellow shell-sulphur, and then were
killed by high explosives. Other men crept out, careless of death, but
compelled to drink. They crouched over the bodies of the men who lay
above, or in, the shell-holes, and lapped up the puddles and then
crawled down again if they were not hit.

When our infantry attacked at Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel and Thiepval
they were received by waves of machine-gun bullets fired by men who, in
spite of the ordeal of our seven days' bombardment, came out into
the open now, at the moment of attack which they knew through their
periscopes was coming. They brought their guns above the shell-craters
of their destroyed trenches under our barrage and served them. They ran
forward even into No Man's Land, and planted their machine-guns there,
and swept down our men as they charged. Over their heads the German
gunners flung a frightful barrage, plowing gaps in the ranks of our men.

On the left, by Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel, the British attack
failed, as I have told, but southward the "impregnable" lines were
smashed by a tide of British soldiers as sand castles are overwhelmed by
the waves. Our men swept up to Fricourt, struck straight up to Montauban
on the right, captured it, and flung a loop round Mametz village.

For the German generals, receiving their reports with great difficulty
because runners were killed and telephones broken, the question was:
"How will these British troops fight in the open after their first
assault? How will our men stand between the first line and the second?"

As far as the German troops were concerned, there were no signs of
cowardice, or "low morale" as we called it more kindly, in those early
days of the struggle. They fought with a desperate courage, holding on
to positions in rearguard actions when our guns were slashing them an