“There was bloody work in the village of Neuve Chapelle. The capture of a place at the bayonet point is generally a grim business, in which instant, unconditional surrender is the only means by which bloodshed, a deal of bloodshed, can be prevented. If there is individual resistance here and there the attacking troops cannot discriminate. They must go through, slaying as they go such as oppose them (the Germans have a monopoly of the finishing-off of wounded men), otherwise the enemy’s resistance would not be broken, and the assailants would be sniped and enfiladed from hastily prepared strongholds at half a dozen different points. “The village was a sight that the men say they will never forget. It looked as if an earthquake had struck it. The published photographs do not give any idea of the indescribable mass of ruins to which our guns reduced it. The chaos is so utter that the very line of the streets is all but obliterated. “It was indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle Brigade--the first regiment to enter the village, I believe--raced headlong. Of the church only the bare shell remained, the interior lost to view beneath a gigantic mound of débris. The little churchyard was devastated, the very dead plucked from their graves, broken coffins and ancient bones scattered about amid the fresher dead, the slain of that morning--gray-green forms asprawl athwart the tombs. Of all that once fair village but two things remained intact--two great crucifixes reared aloft, one in the churchyard, the other over against the château. From the cross, that is the emblem of our faith, the figure of Christ, yet intact though all pitted with bullet marks, looked down in mute agony on the slain in the village. “The din and confusion were indescribable. Through the thick pall of shell smoke Germans were seen on all sides, some emerging half dazed from cellars and dugouts, their hands above their heads, others dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned tombstones. Machine guns were firing from the houses on the outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above the noise of the rifles. “Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous enthusiasm. The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in with the Third Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India. The little brown men were dirty but radiant. Kukri in hand they had very thoroughly gone through some houses at the cross-roads on the Rue du Bois and silenced a party of Germans who were making themselves a nuisance there with some machine guns. Riflemen and Gurkhas cheered themselves hoarse.”