The Germans had been trained, too, to an act of amazing courage. Their discipline, that immense power of discipline which dominates men in the mass, was strong enough to make them obey the order to rush through that barrage of ours, that advancing wall of explosion and, if they lived through it, to face our men in the open with massed machine-gun fire. So they did; and as English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh battalions of our assaulting divisions trudged forward over what had been No Man's Land, machine-gun bullets sprayed upon them, and they fell like grass to the scythe. Line after line of men followed them, and each line crumpled, and only small groups and single figures, seeking comradeship, hurried forward. German machine-gunners were bayoneted as their thumbs were still pressed to their triggers. In German front-line trenches at the bottom of Thiepval Wood, outside Beaumont Hamel and on the edge of Gommecourt Park, the field-gray men who came out of their dugouts fought fiercely with stick-bombs and rifles, and our officers and men, in places where they had strength enough, clubbed them to death, stuck them with bayonets, and blew their brains out with revolvers at short range. Then those English and Irish and Scottish troops, grievously weak because of all the dead and wounded behind them, struggled through to the second German line, from which there came a still fiercer rattle of machine-gun and rifle-fire. Some of them broke through that line, too, and went ahead in isolated parties across the wild crater land, over chasms and ditches and fallen trees, toward the highest ground, which had been their goal. Nothing was seen of them. They disappeared into clouds of smoke and flame. Gunner observers saw rockets go up in far places--our rockets--showing that outposts had penetrated into the German lines. Runners came back--survivors of many predecessors who had fallen on the way--with scribbled messages from company officers. One came from the Essex and King's Own of the 4th Division, at a place called Pendant Copse, southeast of Serre. “For God's sake send us bombs.” It was impossible to send them bombs. No men could get to them through the deep barrage of shell-fire which was between them and our supporting troops. Many tried and died. The Ulster men went forward toward Beaumont Hamel with a grim valor which was reckless of their losses. Beaumont Hamel was a German fortress. Machine-gun fire raked every yard of the Ulster way. Hundreds of the Irish fell. I met hundreds of them wounded--tall, strong, powerful men, from Queen's Island and Belfast factories, and Tyneside Irish and Tyneside Scots. “They gave us no chance,” said one of them--a sergeant-major. “They just murdered us.” But bunches of them went right into the heart of the German positions, and then found behind them crowds of Germans who had come up out of their tunnels and flung bombs at them. Only a few came back alive in the darkness.