At about half-past six, as we sat in the sap, we heard the first shell go over.  I went to the end of the traverse alongside the emplacement, and watched the German trenches.  We were ready to fire at any of the enemy we could see, and when the actual attack started, at the end of the bombardment, we were going to keep up a perpetual sprinkling of bullets along their reserve trenches.  A few isolated houses stood just in line with the German trenches.  Our gunners had focussed on these, and they gave them a good pasting.

“Crumph! bang! bang! crumph!”—­hard at it all the time, whilst shrapnel burst and whizzed about all along the German parapet.  The view in front soon became a sort of haze of black dust, as “heavy” after “heavy” burst on top of the Boche positions.  Columns of earth and black smoke shot up like giant fountains into the air.  I caught sight of a lot of the enemy running along a shallow communication trench of theirs, apparently with the intention of reinforcing their front line.  We soon had our machine gun peppering up these unfortunates, and from that moment on kept up an incessant fire on the enemy.

On my left, two of our companies were keeping up a solid rapid fire on the German lines immediately in front.

At last the bombardment ceased.  A confused sound of shouts and yells on our right, intermingled with a terrific crackle of rifle fire, told us the attack had started.  Without ceasing, we kept up the only assistance we could give:  our persistent firing half-right.

How long it all lasted I can’t remember; but when I crept into a soldier’s dug-out, back in one of our trenches, completely exhausted, I heard that we had taken the enemy trench, but that, unfortunately, owing to its enfiladed position, we had to abandon it later.

Such was my first experience of this see-saw warfare of the trenches.

A few days later, as I happened to be passing through poor, shattered Plugstreet Wood, I came across a clearance ’midst the trees.

Two rows of long, brown mounds of earth, each surmounted by a rough, simple wooden cross, was all that was inside the clearing.  I stopped, and looked, and thought—­then went away.

CHAPTER VIII

CHRISTMAS EVE——­A LULL IN HATE—­
BRITON CUM BOCHE

Shortly after the doings set forth in the previous chapter we left the trenches for our usual days in billets.  It was now nearing Christmas Day, and we knew it would fall to our lot to be back in the trenches again on the 23rd of December, and that we would, in consequence, spend our Christmas there.  I remember at the time being very down on my luck about this, as anything in the nature of Christmas Day festivities was obviously knocked on the head.  Now, however, looking back on it all, I wouldn’t have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything.