What's happened?
Of a sudden a deep stillness falls....
The machines are silenced!
Not a single shot, not a single spurt of flame ... there—a rustling rising amid the undergrowth ... the branches overhead are swaying frantically against each other. Look! something is scurrying among the trees, and pushing and hauling—now, to crown it all, they are trying to save their precious machines from us.
Yah! yah! The earth reverberates dully and trembles under our tread ... a roar of cheers, clubbed rifles, that's how they are coming up behind us ... our reserves are driving the last assault home ... they are charging in dense mobs—sappers, sharpshooters, rifle-men ... a tall sapper jumps clean over me—I see how his eyes are flashing as he passes.... Up, after them ... there is the heather ... there is the entrenchment ... down with you into the trench and scramble up on hands and feet ... where are they? Where?—where?... there, by that belt of firs ... they will have disappeared in another minute—past thick, silvery tree-trunks, through the green beech leaves, with the sun laughing in them, the lust of blood charges red and naked ... headlong through the undergrowth—and now—there is something wriggling away so comically before our eyes, and twisting with sinuous dexterity in and out among the trees and the undergrowth ... there is something clinging to the machine as if it were ingrown into the iron.... Ha, ha!—in the clearing yonder the horses are waiting....
"Let go! Run for what you are worth—let go!"
But they won't let go ... for their horses are already ploughing through the undergrowth ... the wagon is straining to the traces ... in another minute they will have thrown their guns into the wagon ... and then so-long ... I am done—the trees are dancing round and round before my eyes ... I catch my foot in the root of a tree.... Lay on! Lay on! They are "ours" who have come up, and are laying on blindly on heads, and bayoneting bent backs and bared necks, till the whole tangle disperses squealing.... I drag myself to my feet. A lad, a mere boy, is sprawling over and clutching his abandoned gun ... with an oath some one dashes at him—it is my yokel bareheaded, his face distorted by rage ... the boy stretches out his mangled hand to ward him off, his lower jaw is waggling, but his mouth remains voiceless.... The next moment the fixed bayonet plunges into his chest ... first his right, then his shattered left hand seizes the blade as if in his death throes he were trying to pluck it out of his heart; so he clings tightly to the bayonet ... a thrust! a recovery!... a bright, leaping jet follows the steel ... and heart and breath gasp their last among the dead leaves....
All round men are lying slain on the brown carpet of the woods....
But the machines are still alive, and rage against the machines fires the blood, and consumes the flesh.... Up with the trenching tools!... with axes upraised they rush at the machines, and hail blows upon the barrels. The retorts wherein Death has brewed his potion shriek as though wounded ... the jackets burst ... the water flows out ... and the carriage leaps splintered into the air ... twisted metal, the spokes of wheels and cartridge-belts litter the ground all round, but we are battering and smashing everything underfoot until our hot blood has cooled its rage on the metal....
And now amid joyous cheers raise the thunderous shout of Victory. Let the pipes and the bugles ring out. This is Death on the stricken field! This is a soldier's frenzy and the joy of battle: to charge with bared breast against planted steel—to dash cheering with soft, uncased brain against a wall of steel. In such wholesale, callous, purposeful fashion vermin only are exterminated. We count for nothing more than vermin in this war.