77
THE YPRES TIMES
shell-holes, in a vain endeavour to escape the storm. Between Delville Wood and
High Wood the trench curved back into a deep loop, and in this loop the men were
enfiladed and very few escaped the bombardment.
The full fury of the storm fell upon the helpless crouching men of B
Company, and in a short space of time the trench was converted into a veritable
shambles. The few who escaped the lash of the storm were busy tending their
less fortunate comrades.
It was, indeed, a terrible ordeal by fire; but worse was awaiting the survivors.
At midnight the assembly began under a bright moon and a clear sky. The
batteries behind were firing in a listless fashion, and the shells whined lazily over
head. A few star shells from the German line struck white light on the dwarfed
tree stumps -and edged, as with fire, the limp bodies of the dead that lay littered
about the desolate field. Fate had dealt hardly with the Portsmouth Battalion,
Photo 1 IA1 itchelin &C*e
DELVILLE WOOD.
and here again it struck an unkind blow, for whilst the men were all packed and
crowded in the steep assembly trenches an ill-fated star shell disclosed to a wakeful
enemy the figure of the Adjutant and others standing upright on the parapet
directing the platoons into position. There was a short burst of machine-gun fire
and a torrent of star shell beat upon the waiting battalion.
The Adjutant was killed, an entire machine-gun section was wiped out, and
many men were buried under the falling sides of the trench. It was a moment of
mad panic, the panic of helplessness, when men felt their courage slipping from their
grasp. It was a moment that seemed like hours to the waiting infantry, packed
as they were like rats in a trap, unable to move hand or foot, with no scope for
valour and no play for passion. With the cries of the wounded ringing in theii
ears, with the foul earth spitting fire at them, the very parapet rising over them
like a dark wave ready to fall and engulf them, and with the blood of their stricken
comrades spattering about them. There was no light but the flame that killed, no
sound but the crash of the shells and the cries of the wounded, and there seemed
no hope but for death.
Out of that terrible ordeal the shaken remnants of the battalion were at last
drawn, and the men lay down in the open to await the dawn which would bring
with it the signal to rise and go forward to the assault. They lay down in the
