Bob's remembrance was that he was calmly fulfilling the orders that had been given to him, and that he was strangely oblivious of danger.
Event after event seemed to follow each other, like so many pictures in a cinema performance.
He remembered his men in their trenches coolly firing, while shot and shell fell thick around them.
Later, they moved forward, and took cover under some raised ground, where they lay silently and warily watching.
He was watching too. In his eagerness he had risen to his feet, and thus exposed himself to the sight of the enemy. The ground was torn up at his feet, and he felt something burning hot graze his arm, as if some one had touched him with a burning knife.
But he was unhurt! He knew that a bullet had only touched his arm. An inch to the right, and it would have missed him altogether; two inches to the left, and his arm would have been shattered; a foot to the left, and he would, in all probability, have been killed.
He saw a body of men in German uniform moving nearer to them. It was a great mass of soldiers, who came on in great blocks of sixty or eighty, four deep. The British waited silently, awaiting the word of command. Eagerly they longed for the word, "Fire!"
At last it came, and almost as if by magic a thousand rifles went off at the same moment, leaving great gaps in the German ranks which had a few seconds before been filled with a living, breathing humanity.
Again the crack of rifles, and again gaps were made. But still the enemy came forward. Bob even thought he heard the cry of "Vorwärts! Vorwärts!"
Now and then above the din he heard what seemed like the sound of singing. It sounded like the tune he had heard early in the morning.