moment comes when thousands of men
start suddenly out of the bare earth like Sons of the Dragon's Teeth
and as promptly charge forward. For a brief moment their shouts are
heard through the stillness and then their voices are drowned by one
great hellish din, made up of the roar of guns, the crash of cannon,
the scream of shells, and the shock of ear-splitting explosions. The
ground under their feet heaves and shakes and the air about them is
filled with a confusion of flying dust and debris.

* * * * *

As we stood on the hill-crest and talked to the French officer a
furious cannonade was going on around us. In our rear, hidden behind
hills, three different French batteries were in intermittent action,
and somewhere off beyond the valley in front lay the hidden German
batteries which were returning their fire. Shells from both sides
passed back and forth over our heads and the German shells banged and
burst a thousand yards behind our backs.

The guns beside us were silent. They had, undetected, held their
present position for a whole day. They watched the two lines in the
valley as intently as these lines watched each other, for in front of
us was one of those crucial points against which attacks are
frequently launched by the enemy. The batteries beside which we stood
waited hour after hour for that sudden critical moment when the
Germans should attempt to launch any attack between the lines. These
nine guns could together fire two hundred rounds a minute, which means
seventy thousand shrapnel bullets. These batteries were connected by
telephone with the trenches a mile in front, and also with various
observation points from which the results of their fire could be
accurately judged and cross-checked.

A few hundred yards to our right in plain view across the open fields
was the little village of Auchonvillers. Suddenly a great German shell
burst with an earth-shaking shock in the open fields about three
hundred yards behind it, throwing up a great cloud of inky black smoke
nearly as large as a city block. It made a crater more than a hundred
feet in circumference. The French officers said that it was either a
twelve-inch or an "eleven-point-two" and prophesied that a second and
more accurate shot would soon follow and strike the village itself. We
watched intently and some minutes later a great shell did fall
squarely into the little hamlet. Again a great cloud of jet black
smoke