As the gun-blasts began I saw some figures rise up back of the German trench. I judged that they were the relief coming up or a working party that had been under cover. These Germans had to make a quick decision: Would they try a leap for the dugouts or a leap to the rear? They decided on flight. A hundred-yard sprint and they would be out of that murderous swath laid so accurately on a narrow belt. They ran as men will only run from death. No goose-stepping or "after you, sir" limited their eagerness. I had to smile at their precipitancy and as some dropped it was hard to realize that they had fallen from death or wounds. They seemed only manikins in a pantomime. Then a lone figure stepped up out of a communication trench just back of the German first line. This tall officer, who could see nothing between walls of earth where he was, stood up in full view looking around as if taking stock of the situation, deciding, perhaps, whether that smoke barrage to his right now rolling out of the British trench was on the real line of attack or was only for deception; observing and concluding what his men, I judge, were never to know, for, as a man will when struck a hard blow behind the knees, he collapsed suddenly and the earth swallowed him up before the bursts of shrapnel smoke had become so thick over the trench that it formed a curtain. There must have been a shell a minute to the yard. Shrapnel bullets were hissing into the mouths of dugouts; death was hugging every crevice, saying to the Germans: "Keep down! Keep out of the rain! If you try to get out with a machine gun you will be killed! Our infantry is coming!" XXIV WATCHING A CHARGE The British trench comes to life--The line goes forward--A modern charge no chance for heroics--Machine-like forward movement--The most wicked sound in a battle--The first machine gun--A beautiful barrage--The dreaded "shorts"--The barrage lifts to the second line--The leap into the trenches--Figures in green with hands up--Captured from dugouts--A man who made his choice and paid the price--German answering fire--Second part of the program--Again the protecting barrage--Success--Waves of men advancing behind waves of shell fire--Prisoners in good fettle--Brigadier-General Philip Howell. Now the British trench came to life. What seemed like a row of khaki-colored washbasins bottom side up and fast to a taut string rose out of the cut in the earth on the other side of the valley, and after them came the shoulders and bodies of British soldiers who began climbing over the parapet just as a man would come up the cellar stairs. This was the charge.