The tut-ut-ut-ut of machine-guns developed from several parts of the square, while the crack of rifles increased in intensity.
No. 7 Platoon jumped up and advanced into the open, followed by the third wave.
I extended my runners and followed.
What followed next beggars description. As I write these lines my hand hesitates to describe the hell that was let loose upon those men. No eye but mine could take in the picture so completely.
Will the world ever know what these men faced and fought against—these men of the City of London? Not unless I tell it, for I alone saw all that happened that day; and my hand alone, weak and incapable though it feels, is the only one that can do it.
Barely had I emerged from the wood with my ten runners when a perfect hurricane of shells were hurled at us, machine-guns from several points spraying their deadly fire backward and forward, dropping men like corn before the reaper. From all three sides of the square a hurricane of fire was poured into the centre of the square upon us, as we emerged from the wood.
In far less time than it takes to record it, the attacking waves became a mere sprinkling of men. They went on for a yard or two, and then all seemed to vanish; and even my runners, whom I had extended into line, were dropping fast.
The situation was critical, desperate. Fearful lest the attack should fail, I ran forward, and collecting men here and there from shell-holes where some had taken refuge, I formed them into a fresh firing-line, and once more we pressed forward.
Again and again the line was thinned; and again the survivors, undaunted and unbeaten, reformed and pressed forward.
Men laughed, men cried in the desperation of the moment. We were grappling with death; we were dodging it, cheating it; we were mad, blindly hysterical. What did anything matter? Farther and farther into the inferno we must press, at any cost, at any cost; leaping, jumping, rushing, we went from shell-hole to shell-hole; and still the fire continued with unrelenting fury.