“The din was continuous. An officer who had the curious idea of putting his ear to the ground said it was as though the earth were being smitten great blows with a Titan’s hammer. After the first few shells had plunged screaming amid clouds of earth and dust into the German trenches, a dense pall of smoke hung over the German lines. The sickening fumes of lyddite blew back into the British trenches. In some places the troops were smothered in earth and dust or even spattered with blood from the hideous fragments of human bodies that went hurtling through the air. At one point the upper half of a German officer, his cap crammed on his head, was blown into one of our trenches. “Words will never convey any adequate idea of the horror of those five and thirty minutes. When the hands of officers’ watches pointed to five minutes past eight, whistles resounded along the British lines. At the same moment the shells began to burst farther ahead, for, by previous arrangement, the gunners, lengthening their fuses, were ‘lifting’ on to the village of Neuve Chapelle so as to leave the road open for our infantry to rush in and finish what the guns had begun. “The shells were now falling thick among the houses of Neuve Chapelle, a confused mass of buildings seen reddish through the pillars of smoke and flying earth and dust. At the sound of the whistle--alas for the bugle, once the herald of victory, now banished from the fray!--our men scrambled out of the trenches and hurried higgledy-piggledy into the open. Their officers were in front. Many, wearing overcoats and carrying rifles with fixed bayonets, closely resembled their men. [Illustration: BRITISH INDIAN TROOPS CHARGING THE GERMAN TRENCHES AT NEUVE CHAPELLE Germany counted on a revolution in India, but the Indian troops proved to be among the most loyal and brilliant fighters in the Imperial forces.]