One thing stands out so clearly in my otherwise treacly mind that I feel I never, never shall forget it; and that is the sensation of the moment when the order reached us to advance. We had been a long time waiting for it, even before our bombardment began, and when it came— But, although the sensation is very clear to me, I'm not at all sure I can convey any idea of it to you. I've just asked Lawson what he felt like when it came; but the conspiracy of reticence, or something, leads him to say he doesn't know. I found myself muttering something at the moment, and he says he did, too. That's something of a coincidence. He believes the actual words he muttered were: "What ho!" But that's not exactly illuminating, is it?
I believe my thought, as we scrambled over the parapet was that now, at last, we were going to wipe Petticoat Lane off the map as a front line. Good-bye to this hole! That was the idea, I think. We did so hate that bit of line, with its quicksand craters in front, and the sodden lowness that made it a sort of pocket for the receipt of every kind of explosive the Boche liked to lob in on us.
The struggle through the craters, before we got to the first Boche line, was pretty beastly, and, I am afraid, cost us rather dear, although we got to the near lip of the craters before the punishment began, thanks to a quick start and the fine accuracy of our gunners in their curtain fire. You know the sort of thing that happens in nightmares, when each of your feet weighs a ton and a half, at the moment when speed is the only thing to save you from the most hideous kind of spiflication. Getting through the craters was like that.
Our good time began when the craters were passed, and there was nothing but Boche trenches in front of us. Then it was we began to feel the jolly feelings you've read about; the glorious exhilaration of the charge. And, really, it wouldn't be possible to exaggerate about that. You can take it from me that the most highly coloured chromo-lithographs can't overdo that, in the essential spirit of the thing. Their detail is pretty groggy, of course—no waving plumes, gay colours, flashing swords, and polished top-boots, you know. My goodness, no! We were all the colour of the foul clay we'd come from—all over. But the spirit of it! It's perfectly hopeless for me to try to tell you, especially in a letter. They say they pump spirits and drugs into the Boches before they leave their trenches. No drug and no champagne, even of the choicest, could have given us any more exhilaration, I fancy, than one felt in that dash from the craters to the first Boche line. Heavens! but it was the real thing; real, real, real; that's what it was, more than anything else. Made you feel you'd never been really and fully alive till then. Seven-leagued boots, and all that kind of thing, you know. The earth seemed to fly under your feet. I can see the dirty, earth-smeared faces in that Boche trench now. (They were scuffling and scrambling out from the dug-outs, where they'd sheltered from our bombardment, to their fire-steps.) They seemed of no more importance than so many Aunt Sallies or Dutch dolls. Things like that to stop us! Absurd!
And how one whooped! I was fairly screaming "'A' Company!" at the very top of my voice as we jumped into that trench. The man on my left was Corporal Slade (Lance-Sergeant, I should say) and, as we reached their parapet I could hear him yelling beside my ear, through all the roar of the guns: "Hell! Give 'em hell! Give 'em hell, boys!" Most outrageous!
In the trench it was a sort of a football scrum glorified; oh! very much glorified. Most curiously, the thing passing through my mind then was "the Peacemaker's" old gag, apropos of the use of his trench dagger, you know: "When you hear that cough, you can pass on to the next Boche. Get him in the right place, and three inches of the steel will do. Don't waste time over any more." Queer wasn't it?
Galloping across the next stretch—by the way, it was the very devil getting out over the Boche parados, so high and shaly. A fellow grabbed my right ankle when I was half-way up; the very thing I'd always dreaded in dreams of the trenches, and, by Gad! if I didn't kick out you must let me know about it. I'd sooner have had a bayonet thrust any day than the ram of my field boot that chap got in his face. The next stretch, to the Boche second line, yes! The champagney feeling was stronger than ever then, because one felt that front line was smashed. Sort of crossing the Rhine, you know. One was on German soil, so to say. My hat, what scores to pay!
And mixed up with the splendid feeling of the charge itself—by long odds the finest feel I ever had in my life—there was a queer, worrying little thought, too. I knew some of our men were dropping, and— "Damn it, I ought to be doing something to save those chaps." That was the thought. It kind of stung; sort of feeling I ought to have some knowledge I had failed to acquire. They're your men, you ought to know. That sort of feeling. But I don't think it slowed one's stride at all. The champagne feeling was the main thing. I was absolutely certain we were bringing it off all right. The Boche guns were real enough; but their men didn't seem to me to count.
Queer thing about the wire in front of that second line. It wasn't anything like so good or extensive as front-line wire, and I dare say our guns had knocked a good deal of the stuffing out of it. Still, there was a lot left, more than I expected for a second line. Do you know, "A" Company went through it as though it had been paper. It was a glorious thing that. You know how gingerly one approaches barbed wire or anything like that; a thorn hedge, if you like. And you've seen how fellows going into the sea to bathe, at low tide, will gallop through the rows of little wavelets where the water's shallow; feet going high and arms waving, the men themselves whooping for the fun of the thing. That's exactly how our chaps went through that wire. I'll guarantee nobody felt a scratch from it. And yet my breeches and tunic were in ribbons from the waist down when I got to the field ambulance, and from the waist to the knee I'll carry the pattern of that wire for some time to come. Might have been swan's-down for all we knew about it.
And then, unfortunately, on the parapet of the second line I got my little dose, and was laid out. Goodness knows, that shell certainly laid out some Boches as well as me. I'll say this for 'em, they met us on the parapet all right. But "A" Company's business was urgent. We had scores to settle from Petticoat Lane and other choice spots; and the Kaiser's got no one who could stop us. I do wish I could have seen it through. I know they tried hard to counter us out of that line. But they couldn't shift old "A," who did just as well when I dropped out as before—the beggars! Lawson tells me I was yelling like a madman on that parapet for some time before I went to sleep, you know: "I'll be there in a minute!"—there in a minute! How absurd!