"We are quite shut off from the rest of the world," wrote one of them.
"Nothing comes to us. No letters. The English keep such a barrage on
our approaches it is terrible. To-morrow evening it will be seven days
since this bombardment began. We cannot hold out much longer.
Everything is shot to pieces."
Thirst was one of their tortures. In many of the tunneled shelters
there was food enough, but the water could not be sent up. The German
soldiers were maddened by thirst. When rain fell many of them crawled
out and drank filthy water mixed with yellow shell-sulphur, and then
were killed by high explosives. Other men crept out, careless of
death, but compelled to drink. They crouched over the bodies of the
men who lay above, or in, the shell-holes, and lapped up the puddles
and then crawled down again if they were not hit.
When our infantry attacked at Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel and
Thiepval they were received by waves of machine-gun bullets fired by
men who, in spite of the ordeal of our seven days' bombardment, came
out into the open now, at the moment of attack which they knew through
their periscopes was coming.
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