It was murder to fire into that wall of misty grey--but the men who made it were bent on murdering us. I was firing as fast as I could. On my right was a lad of nineteen, who was one of the 3rd battalion militia of the Black Watch--a detachment sent to replace our losses. "Pray God they may not pass the wire," he half sobbed with every breath. He was afraid, but he would not run. Every man is afraid in his first battle. The recruit's face was drawn and white--his lips a thin, pressed line--but he fired calmly. He did not mind the bullets, but he had not yet the "spirit of the bayonet," and he dreaded that they should pass the wire. The first of the thin line was at the entanglement. Most of them dropped before they touched a wire, but others cut a single strand before a bullet found its berth. They died; but they had succeeded in their mission. A thread of life cut to sever a strand of wire! The wave had risen and was breaking over the entanglement. They were beginning to get through. Here and there a man lumbered up the gentle slope toward our trenches only to fall before he reached them. The mass of them was worming through the wire now. A shrill whistle blew. From our trenches came a sound like the beating of a hundred pneumatic hammers. It was the music of Hell. The machine guns and artillery were making it, and they were spitting out death in streams to the accompaniment of their devilish music. God was answering the prayer of the little lad. The Germans were dropping at the wire; they would not pass. The wee death engines were playing just a foot or so above the bottom of the wire, and they were literally cutting the legs from under the mass of grey-clad men. The back wash from the wave which broke against the wire was thinner than the wash that had preceded it. "Thank God!" gasped the boy; "I did not have to use my bayonet." "It's guid steel wasted," growled a ginger-whiskered old-timer on my left, as he wiped the dampness from the blade with his sleeve and dropped the bayonet back into its scabbard. [To-day such an attack on the British lines would invariably be followed by a counter attack to show the Germans that the initiative lies--always must lie--with the Allies; but, in those days, we had not the men. Our lines were often so thin that, had they been pierced at a single point, we would have been crumpled up like paper.] After this fight, we were relieved by an East Yorkshire regiment and told that we would go to billets about three miles in the rear, but we had scarcely left the trenches when we received orders to get to billets and hold ourselves in readiness to occupy a new position in the line. The Black Watch at that time was again brought up to strength by the addition of a re-enforcement of five hundred men.