t come,
that so an end, any end, might come to the shelling.

It was fine, cloudless, summer weather, not very clear, for there was
a good deal of heat haze and of mist in the nights and early mornings.
It was hot yet brisk during the days. The roads were thick in dust.
Clouds and streamers of chalk dust floated and rolled over all the
roads leading to the front, till men and beasts were grey with it.

At half-past six in the morning of the 1st of July all the guns on our
front quickened their fire to a pitch of intensity never before
attained. Intermittent darkness and flashing so played on the enemy
line from Gommecourt to Maricourt that it looked like a reef on a
loppy day. For one instant it could be seen as a white rim above the
wire, then some comber of a big shell struck it fair and spouted it
black aloft. Then another and another fell, and others of a new kind
came and made a different darkness, through which now and then some
fat white wreathing devil of explosion came out and danced. Then it
would show out, with gaps in it, and with some of it level with the
field, till another comber would fall and go up like a breaker and
smash it out of sight again. Over all the villages on the field there
floated a kind of bloody dust from the blasted bricks.

In our trenches after seven o'clock on that morning, our men waited
under a heavy fire for the signal to attack. Just before half-past
seven, the mines at half a dozen points went up with a roar that shook
the earth and brought down the parapets in our lines. Before the
blackness of their burst had thinned or fallen the hand of Time rested
on the half-hour mark, and along all that old front line of the
English there came a whistling and a crying. The men of the first wave
climbed up the parapets, in tumult, darkness, and the presence of
death, and having done with all pleasant things, advanced across the
No Man's Land to begin the Battle of the Somme.

THE END

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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