"Let her rip, ye divils!" shouted some of the Ulstermen in jocular defiance at the enemy and his machine-gun; "and," said an officer relating the story, "the Bosche let her rip all right." One of the wounded rank and file told me that in the advance he lost entire perception of the roar of the British guns which was so impressive as he lay with his comrades in the wood, though they still continued their thundering. Their terrible diapason of sound seemed to be lulled into absolute silence, so far as he was concerned, by the hollow, crepitating "tap-t-t-tap" of the German machine-guns; and the swish, swish, swish of the bullets, of all the noises of battle the most unnerving to soldiers assailing a position. But the Ulstermen were in a mood of the highest exaltation, a mood in which troops may be destroyed but will not easily be subjugated. The day had thrilling historic memories for them. "July the First on the banks of the Boyne, There was a famous battle." The opening lines of their song, "The Boyne Water," recounting the deeds of their forefathers, came inevitably to their minds. "Just as we were about to attack," writes Rifleman Edward Taylor of the West Belfast Volunteers, "Captain Gaffikin took out an orange handkerchief and, waving it around his head, shouted, 'Come on, boys, this is the first of July!'" "No surrender!" roared the men. It was the answer given by the gallant defenders of Derry from their walls to King James and the besieging Jacobites. On the fields of Picardy new and noble meanings were put into these old, out-worn Irish battle-cries. One sergeant of the Inniskillings went into the fray with his Orange sash on him. Some of the men provided themselves with orange lilies before they went up to the assembly trenches, and these they now wore in their breasts. But, indeed, their colours were growing in profusion at their feet when they came out of the trenches--yellow charlock, crimson poppies and blue cornflowers, and many put bunches of these wild flowers in their tunics. So the Ulstermen were keen to prove their metal. They divided their forces and advanced to German positions on the right and left. Through it all their battle-shout was "No surrender." But there was one surrender which they were prepared to make, and did make--the surrender, for the cause, of their young lives and all the bright hopes of youth.