"That's all right, old man," he shouted. "I'm looking out. I'll be careful, and you do the same. Here, stick your pipe in your mouth! It helps with the men."
I'd had to tell him that in the centre and on the extreme left we had had a few casualties. The stretcher-bearers were doing their best for them.
Not many minutes afterwards the curtain of fire appeared to be shifting back. The row was just as great, or greater. The smoke was just as dense, and there was a deal more gas in it. But it seemed to me there were very few shells actually landing along our front, and I could see the flashes of them bursting continuously a little in our rear.
As I got to the left flank of the bombarded sector I found Taffy directing the fire of a machine-gun diagonally across the front. The men were all out there, and you could see them itching for the word to get over the parapet. Their faces were quite changed. Upon my word, I'd hardly have known some of 'em. They had the killing look, and nearly every man was fiddling with his bayonet, making sure he had the good steel ready for Fritz. Seeing they were all serene, I made my way along to the other flank. I hardly thought about it, but just went, and that shows there's something shapes our ends, doesn't it? I should have been pretty sick afterwards if I hadn't made that way when I did.
The first thing I saw on that flank was a couple of men lifting poor R——'s body from the bottom of the trench. The Infant had been killed instantaneously. His head was absolutely smashed. He had been the most popular officer in our mess since we came out.
There was no time to think, but the sight of the Infant, lying there dead, sent a kind of sudden heat through me from inside; as I felt it on patrol that night. I hurried on, with Corporal Slade close on my heels. The gassy smoke was very dense. Round the next traverse was the little bay from which the other machine-gun had been firing. It wasn't firing now. Two men were lying dead close beside it, and another badly wounded; and half across the parapet was Sergeant T——, who'd been in charge of the gun, being hauled out by his arms by two Boches, while two other Boches stood by, one holding his rifle with bayonet fixed, in the thrust position, as if inclined to run T—— through. The other Boches were shouting something in German. They wanted to make T—— prisoner. There was blood on one side of his neck. The insolence of the thing made me quite mad for the minute, and I screamed at those Boches like a maniac.
It seems rum, but they turned and bolted into the smoke; I after them as hard as I could pelt. I shot one in the back with my revolver. He fell and, as I came up with him, I snatched his rifle from the ground beside him. I was like a lunatic. Then, just as suddenly, I came to my senses. The other Boches were out of sight in the smoke. I jumped back into the trench and put Corporal Slade on to the machine-gun, telling him to keep traversing that front. I ran farther down the trench to discover what had happened. The fire trench dipped there into a wooded hollow. The pounding of it had levelled the whole place till you could hardly make out the trench line.
Here I found the bulk of my own platoon furiously scrapping with thirty or forty Boches over the parapet. It was splendid. I can't describe the feeling, as one rushed into it. But it was absolutely glorious. And it gave me my first taste of bayonet work in earnest—with a Boche bayonet in my hand, mark you. Made me quite glad of the bayonet practice we had at home with Sergeant W——, after he'd had the course at Aldershot. No. 1 Platoon had never let the beggars get as far as our trench, but met 'em outside. To give them their due, those Boches didn't try any of their "Kamerade" business. They did fight—until they saw half their number stuck and down; and then they turned and bolted for it into the dense smoke over No Man's Land.
They were most of 'em bayoneted in the back before I could get my fellows to turn. I didn't want them to go far in that dense fog of gassy smoke, and there was hardly any daylight left. I didn't want them tumbling into any ambush. On the way back we gathered up a score of Boche knives, a lot of their caps, two or three rifles, and a whole box of their hand grenades, with not one missing.
That was the end of the first bombardment we've seen. It lasted exactly an hour, and our gunners tell us the Boche sent more than 5000 shells over in that time. He has certainly knocked our line about rather badly. All hands are at work now repairing the trench and the wire, with a whole Company of R.E. to help. Our casualties were eighteen wounded and seven killed. We buried thirty-one dead Boches, and they removed a good many dead. We got eleven wounded and nine unwounded Boche prisoners. Of course, they took a lot of their wounded away. They captured no prisoners from us.