Energy books

Storms of gun-fire broke loose from our batteries a week before the
battle. It was our first demonstration of those stores of high-
explosive shells which had been made by the speeding up of munition-
work in England, and of a gun-power which had been growing steadily
since the coming out of the New Army. The weather was heavy with mist
and a drizzle of rain. Banks of smoke made a pall over all the arena
of war, and it was stabbed and torn by the incessant flash of bursting
shells. I stood on the slag heap, staring at this curtain of smoke,
hour after hour, dazed by the tumult of noise and by that impenetrable
veil which hid all human drama. There was no movement of men to be
seen, no slaughter, no heroic episode--only through rifts in the smoke
the blurred edges of slag heaps and pit-heads, and smoking ruins.
German trenches were being battered in, German dugouts made into the
tombs of living men, German bodies tossed up with earth and stones--
all that was certain but invisible.


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