In simple narrative the author carries the reader through appalling scenes of horror, and as we read we are made to realize the slaughter of the enemy’s machine guns, of their ground-mines, electric-wire entanglements, and exploding shells; we are made to hear the roar of the artillery fire dealing death and destruction, and there rises before us the mental vision of the fierce hand to hand conflict, and the dead and dying lying thickly in the dark ravine.
“For hill and battle plain,
With dying men and slain,
Grew mountain heights of pain,
And mine is boundless woe.”
The grim warrior who stormed and took the most impregnable fortress in the world gives expression to his feelings on his own great achievement, in saddest words.
“And mine is boundless woe,”
For the grim warrior’s heart is cleft in twain for the human bullets that under his command hurled themselves to their death.
In the world’s greatest war, human bullets were sacrificed for the protection of hearths and homes and a nation’s existence, moreover the human bullets were made of men who fought and died for sovereign and country.