Imagination leaped out, through
invisibility, to the realization of the things that were happening
beyond.
From our place of observation there were brief glimpses of the human
element in this scene of impersonal powers and secret forces. Across a
stretch of flat ground beyond some of those zigzag lines of trenches
little black things were scurrying forward. They were not bunched
together in close groups, but scattered. Some of them seemed to
hesitate, and then to fall and lie where they fell, others hurrying on
until they disappeared in the drifting clouds.
It was the foremost line of our infantry attack, led by the bombers.
The Germans were firing tempests of shells. Some of them were
curiously colored, of a pinkish hue, or with orange-shaped puffs of
vivid green. They were poison-shells giving out noxious gases. All the
chemistry of death was poured out on both sides--and through it went
the men of the Midland Division.
The attack on the right was delivered by a brigade of Staffordshire
men, who advanced in four lines toward the Big Willie trench which
formed the southeast side of the Hohenzollern redoubt.
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