A glint of bayonets made a quickset hedge along the line of
churned-up earth which had been the Germans' front--line trench. Our
guns had cut the wire or torn gaps into it. Through the broken strands
went the Londoners on the right, the Scots on the left, shouting
hoarsely now. They saw red. They were hunters of human flesh. They
swarmed down into the first long ditch, trampling over dead bodies,
falling over them, clawing the earth and scrambling up the parados,
all broken and crumbled, then on again to another ditch. Boys dropped
with bullets in their brains, throats, and bodies. German machine-guns
were at work at close range.
"Give'em hell!" said an officer of the Londoners--a boy of nineteen.
There were a lot of living Germans in the second ditch, and in holes
about. Some of them stood still, as though turned to clay, until they
fell with half the length of a bayonet through their stomachs. Others
shrieked and ran a little way before they died. Others sat behind
hillocks of earth, spraying our men with machine-gun bullets until
bombs were hurled on them and they were scattered into lumps of flesh.
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