Down below in the front line the battalions had waited for that moment, crouched in the bottom of their trenches, listening to the rolling thunder of the guns, glancing at watches, examining and re-examining rifles and bombs and equipment. One battalion in the Elbow Trench had been shelled rather heavily about dawn, but the fire had died away before the moment for the attack, smothered probably by the greater volume of our artillery fire. At last a word passed down the trench, and the men began to clamber out and form into line beyond their own wire. They could see nothing of the enemy trench, although it was only little more than 150 yards away. Its outline was hidden in a thick haze of smoke, although its position was still marked by spouting columns of smoke and flying earth and débris from our bursting shells. But exactly on the "zero hour" these shell-bursts ceased and over the heads of the infantry the lighter shrapnel began to rip and crash, pouring a torrent of bullets along the earth in front of the line as it started to move forward. There was little rifle or machine-gun fire to oppose the advance, and although many shells were passing over, only odd and ill-directed ones were dropping in the open No Man's Land. It began to look as if the steadily-moving line was going to reach the first trench with very little loss. But suddenly, with sharp whooping rushes, a string of shells fell in a precise line exactly across the path of the advancing battalion; and before their springing smoke-clouds had fairly risen, came another crashing and crackling burst of shells along the same line; and then there fell a thick curtain of smoke and fire along the battalion's front, a curtain out of which the rapidly falling shells flamed and winked in red and orange glares, and the flying splinters screeched and whined and whirred.