convoys, a wet, clayey soil, into which one sinks to the waist. Mud everywhere. Slime everywhere. One must slide down the funnels and holes that the shells have made. Thus the waves of the assault gather for their onset. The Germans had constructed defences formed of five lines of trenches, each alternated with at least three rows of barbed wire entanglements. The chevaux de frise and other obstacles covered, in places, a space over 200 yards wide.

On the one hand and on the other the banks of the Ancre ran up into bluffs like buttresses. Since his failure of the 1st of July, the enemy has cut among these natural protections deep trenches which wind along parallel to the course of the river. He has also set up on the slopes powerful machine-gun emplacements and blockhouses with mortars.

The English advance went like clockwork. The secret had been well kept; the evening before, the troops of this sector were quite unaware that an advance was to take place.

An absolute determination inspired both officers and men. The result of the attack was never in doubt. The trenches were taken by storm, together with those who manned them. It was a veritable harvest of men. The fourth line was taken at the point of the bayonet in eighteen minutes.

At eight in the morning we attacked the outskirts of the three villages. Beaumont-Hamel was the first to be taken, with its garrison. Before Beaucourt we were brought to a halt by machine-gun fire. Saint Pierre-Divion was outflanked. The artillery increased its range and cut short all counter-attacks.

1. IN BEAUMONT-HAMEL.

By nine o'clock the objective was gained with complete success. The fog grew thicker. The fire of the heavy guns and the barrage fires followed one another without pause.

Through twilight gloom and the mists of low-lying clouds monstrous lightnings flicker across this spectral landscape. The smallest hill is a Sinai. In a leap of nearly 1-1/2 miles the batteries have advanced at the same pace as the troops, taking such cover as Heaven sends them. All this sector smokes and roars to its farthest extremities. It is as if there were dragons squatting everywhere by the hundred and spitting flame. Fires break out, blushing palely through the fog. Stores of munitions explode behind the villages. It is like the brute thunder of the earthquake.

The fiercest fighting developed at Beaumont-Hamel, where the ground is full of great caves that run into one another. In these there was plenty of room for four companies.

Next, the centre of interest shifted to the South bank of the Ancre, where Y Gully commands the passage of the river and the road to Beaucourt. This ravine, upon which three months' work had been spent, was a positive arsenal. Every 20 yards along it there was a machine-gun. The Germans believed it to be impregnable. This evening the English had their own guns in it.

Victory everywhere! Three villages taken; more than 2,000 prisoners counted already! I have just been to see them. They are encamped along the edge of an immense bivouac. All about them the heaviest of the guns spit out, minute by minute, their delicate ton-weight mouthfuls. The prisoners are identified, questioned, and searched. A dazed stupor is all that their terrified faces declare. They have suffered very little damage, for most of them have been surprised in their caves and dug-outs. Many of them are still wearing their helmets. Their officers have accepted their bad fortune, one would say, gladly. There is nothing of bravado in their carriage. The Tommies surround this encampment curiously. With a friendliness that is very touching they offer, some cigarettes, others food. Generosity on the one side; a growing astonishment on the other. The German soldiers, nearly all Silesians, accept these things with a sort of childish gratitude.

The motor-ambulances move here, there and everywhere over the clayey fields, where the wheels of the ammunition wagons have drawn mighty furrows, like those that peaceful toil once made here. One hardly sees the faces of these men. They are blanks, for their thoughts are elsewhere, within. On the other hand, one's attention is seized by such things as their feet, mere lumps of clay, that at times the red touch of a swathed wound enlivens. Motor-'buses—as in London—run upon the roads. Those who are lightly wounded crowd to the top. One of them wears a pointed helmet, where shines the two-headed eagle. Others hang the Iron Cross upon their caps. They are all laughing and joking like schoolboys.

The road to Bapaume, to the north, is almost all free. From to-day begins, on this side, the siege of that town, which the Germans have converted into a stronghold. All over the plain the English are lighting camp-fires: and in perfect safety, since the enemy's line has retired about 1-1/2 miles. The skirl of bagpipes, the scream of fifes, the choruses of the men, rise into the foggy night. It proves the truth of the saying: "To live truly is to live perilously."

Victory! And the battle goes on.

CHAPTER II.

IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH.

Beaumont-Hamel, 15th November.

That two-hour tramp through a few kilometres of trenches was a heart-breaking business. We floundered through holes, we were swallowed up in bogs, while the mud that fell from the parapets gradually spread itself over our oilskins. A steel helmet becomes wonderfully heavy after an hour or so, and a dizzy headache soon tormented us, from the constant right-angled turns which we were obliged to make, like so many slaves at a cornmill. But what a reward has been ours since our arrival!

Here we are, seated at the horizontal loophole of a quite new observation post, in the front line, in the very trench from which, the day before yesterday, the English launched their attack.

In front, towards the left, is Beaumont-Hamel. Out of this heap of rubbish start up three-cornered bits of wall, which give to these ruins the look of a dwarf village. On the hillside a mangled copse looks like those guileless charcoal strokes which one sees in a child's drawing. To the right—Beaucourt. Here the ruin is absolute. I have hunted in vain for any trace of man's handiwork. Even the dust of the stones has blown away.

A few hundred yards ahead of us the men have just rushed forward. With rifles held high they spring from the parapet into the open. They look like an army of ants, that now moves along in a stream, now closes together like a vice, now marks time, now plunges into vast funnels, and again, at racing speed, surges up the gentle slope. The barbed-wire entanglements cover acres of ground; they are the eleventh line of the German defences. In many places the wires are so closely bunched together that the balls cannot pass through them.

At least a brigade is engaged. One can see the company leaders quite plainly. The shells are bursting everywhere, throwing up furious fountains of black smoke with which bits of earth and iron are mingled. The rolling clouds of the shrapnel seem to frame one regiment.

Ah! Bad luck! That one was well timed which burst over there on the right, just above the company that was lying down there. The damage must have been serious. Men lie on the ground who will never pick themselves up again. A cloud, the colour of absinthe, hangs sullenly over those little khaki spots.

On the right, on the left, in front, behind, with a disquieting skill and precision, the Germans pile