The tanks straddled the German first-line trench.
So far, they had been voiceless.
There had not been sign nor sound of human leading. They were the incarnation in metal of grotesque terror. They seemed as an evil dream of machines that had developed life: inhuman, monstrous, dire.
Then they spoke.
The German trenches on either side were swept clean of men by that concentrated tornado spout of slaughter.
The French infantry yelled with delight and plunged into the fray after the tanks. One of the giants lifted an eyelid, as a forward window opened to let through a torrent of machine-gun fire. The blast scorched and ravaged the ground before it.
With a grunt the tanks heaved their prodigious menace on.
The Germans did not wait for their coming. They scattered and fled in all directions. They were willing enough to invent new distortions of war, such as poison gas and liquid fire, but, in childish unreason, they became furious when any new device was directed against them.
Yet still the brutes of steel crawled onward, growling, as their sponsons spit flame.