Our guns had shifted their barrage forward at that moment, farther
ahead of the infantry than was afterward allowed, the men being
trained to follow close to the lines of bursting shells, trained to
expect a number of casualties from their own guns--it needs some
training--in order to secure the general safety gained by keeping the
enemy below ground until our bayonets were round his dugouts.
The Germans had been trained, too, to an act of amazing courage. Their
discipline, that immense power of discipline which dominates men in
the mass, was strong enough to make them obey the order to rush
through that barrage of ours, that advancing wall of explosion and, if
they lived through it, to face our men in the open with massed
machine-gun fire. So they did; and as English, Irish, Scottish, and
Welsh battalions of our assaulting divisions trudged forward over what
had been No Man's Land, machine-gun bullets sprayed upon them, and
they fell like grass to the scythe. Line after line of men followed
them, and each line crumpled, and only small groups and single
figures, seeking comradeship, hurried forward.
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