North of the town, where our lines necessarily bulged out, making a salient, the fighting was becoming desperate. Here three regiments especially (the Middlesex, Royal Irish and Royal Fusiliers) lost very heavily as they sturdily contested every yard of ground. This particular point had, from the first, been recognised as the weakest in the British lines.
Barely an hour since the first shots were fired, and now by one o'clock practically every gun and every rifle of the British Force is blazing away as though the powers of hell were set loose.
As yet it would seem that the ammunition is being merely wasted for the sake of making a noise. There is no enemy in sight save in the air the circling aeroplanes, and away on the flanks dimly-seen clouds of horsemen. A modern battlefield with its curious emptiness has so often been described that here one need only record the fact in passing. There is nothing to be seen. The men are firing, in the first flush of excitement, at corners of possible concealment—the line of a hedge, the edge of a wood, the very occasional flash of a field-gun. On the left, in the Second Corps, the British fire slackens somewhat as the men pull themselves together. No one has the foggiest notion of what is really happening. It is the officers' business of the moment to steady the ranks and keep them under cover.
But away on the right, out by Binche, where the Guards are, the storm has burst in fullest fury. No slackening there. The extreme right was held by battalions of historic regiments, names to conjure with: Munster Fusiliers, Black Watch, Scots and Coldstream Guards. Ah, those Guards! The glorious discipline of them! But how distinguish between any of the regiments that day, and after?
Almost from the first the senior officers began to realise that something was wrong, especially on the right. The Divisional Commanders and their immediate staffs, to whom the general idea of strengths and dispositions was known, began to wonder whether a big mistake had not been made. "Well, never mind, we're in for it now, we must do the best we can. But, those guns! There certainly should not be so many out there."
And it was positively uncanny how the German guns got their range. That fact struck everybody almost more than anything else. There appeared to be no preliminary ranging, as was always usual, but guns got direct on to the target at once.
It is difficult at times to avoid launching out into details which are of more interest to soldiers than to the general public, but as everything at this time was so new an occasional lapse may perhaps be excused.
Again, one's brain is so confused with such a mass of detail that it becomes most difficult to disentangle impressions and note them down in dispassionate language. If, however, the reader will take the little pen-pictures of incidents which are given and imagine them, not as isolated facts but as being reproduced fifty times all through the fighting lines, he may get a fair idea of the course of events.
*****
As the day wore on that uncanny effect of the German fire increased. There is no doubt that it was mainly due to the amazingly efficient secret service of the enemy. The H.Q. of a division or a brigade, for instance, does not blatantly advertise its position, and yet time and time again shells were dropped clean on to the particular building where the Staff happened to be. And when they got into another building, plump would come more shells.