The British battalions that went over the parapet from Thiepval northward were of the same mettle as those that took Montauban and Mametz; their training and preparation the same. Where battalions to the southward swept forward according to plan and the guns' pioneering was successful, those on this front in many cases started from trenches already battered in by German shell fire. A few steps across that dead space and officers knew that the supporting artillery, working no less thoroughly in its preliminary bombardment here than elsewhere, had not the situation in hand. All the guns which the Germans had brought up during the time that weather delayed the British attack added their weight to the artillery concentration. Down the valley of the Ancre at its bend they had more or less of an enfilade. Machine guns had survived in their positions in the debris of the trenches or had been mounted overnight and others appeared from manholes in front of the trenches. Sprays of bullets cut crosswise of the blasts of the German curtains of artillery fire. How any men could go the breadth of No Man's Land and survive would have been called miraculous in other days; in these days we know that it was due to the law of chance which will wound one man a dozen times and never bark the skin of another. Any troops might have been warranted in giving up the task before they reached the first German trench. Veterans could have retired without criticism. This is the privilege of tried soldiers who have won victories and are secured by such an expression as, "If the Old Guard saw that it could not be done, why, then, it could not." But these were New Army men in their first offensive. Their victories were yet to be won. This was "the day." Each officer and each man had given himself up as a hostage to death for his cause, his pride of battalion and his manhood when he went over the parapet. The business of the officers was to lead their men to certain goals; that of the men was to go with the officers. All very simple reasoning, this, yet hardly reason: the second nature of training and spirit. How officers had studied the details of their objectives on the map in order to recognize them when they were reached! How like drill it was the way that those human waves moved forward! But they were not waves for long in some instances, only survivors still advancing as if they were parts of a wave, unseen by their commanders in the shell-smoke, buffeted by bursts of high explosives, with every man simply keeping on toward the goal till he arrived or fell. Foolhardy, you say. Perhaps. It is an easy word to utter over a map after the event. You would think of finer words if you had been at the front.