“Our guns behind felt for the German guns.  It was the damnest racket.  Like giant lunatics smashing about amidst colossal pots and pans.  They fired different sorts of shells; stink shells as well as Jack Johnsons, and though we didn’t get much of that at our corner there was a sting of chlorine in the air all through the afternoon.  Most of the stink shells fell short.  We hadn’t masks, but we rigged up a sort of protection with our handkerchiefs.  And it didn’t amount to very much.  It was rather like the chemistry room after Heinrich and the kids had been mixing things.  Most of the time I was busy helping with the men who had got hurt.  Suddenly there came a lull.  Then some one said the Germans were coming, and I had a glimpse of them.

“You don’t look at anything steadily while the guns are going.  When a big gun goes off or a shell bursts anywhere near you, you seem neither to see nor hear for a moment.  You keep on being intermittently stunned.  One sees in a kind of flicker in between the impacts....

“Well, there they were.  This time I saw them.  They were coming out and running a little way and dropping, and our shell was bursting among them and behind them.  A lot of it was going too far.  I watched what our men were doing, and poured out a lot of cartridges ready to my hand and began to blaze away.  Half the German attack never came out of their trench.  If they really intended business against us, which I doubt, they were half-hearted in carrying it out.  They didn’t show for five minutes, and they left two or three score men on the ground.  Whenever we saw a man wriggle we were told to fire at him; it might be an unwounded man trying to crawl back.  For a time our guns gave them beans.  Then it was practically over, but about sunset their guns got back at us again, and the artillery fight went on until it was moonlight.  The chaps in our third company caught it rather badly, and then our guns seemed to find something and get the upper hand....

“In the night some of our men went out to repair the wire entanglements, and one man crawled halfway to the enemy trenches to listen.  But I had done my bit for the day, and I was supposed to sleep in the dug-out.  I was far too excited to sleep.  All my nerves were jumping about, and my mind was like a lot of flying fragments flying about very fast....

“They shelled us again next day and our tea dixy was hit; so that we didn’t get any tea....

“I slept thirty hours after I got back here.  And now I am slowly digesting these experiences.  Most of our fellows are.  My mind and nerves have been rather bumped and bruised by the shelling, but not so much as you might think.  I feel as though I’d presently not think very much of it.  Some of our men have got the stun of it a lot more than I have.  It gets at the older men more.  Everybody says that.  The men of over thirty-five don’t recover from a shelling for weeks.  They go about—­sort of hesitatingly....