After about a hundred yards,
the two men of each team exchange loads, so that after two hundred
yards, in spite of the bitter blenching breeze of early morning, all
but the non-coms. are running with sweat.
Suddenly a vivid star expands down yonder in the uncertain direction
that we are taking--a rocket. Widely it lights a part of the sky
with its milky nimbus, blots out the stars, and then falls
gracefully, fairy-like.
There is a swift light opposite us over there; a flash and a
detonation. It is a shell! By the flat reflection that the explosion
instantaneously spreads over the lower sky we see a ridge clearly
outlined in front of us from east to west, perhaps half a mile away.
That ridge is ours--so much of it as we can see from here and up to
the top of it, where our troops are. On the other slope, a hundred
yards from our first line, is the first German line. The shell fell
on the summit, in our lines; it is the others who are firing.
Another shell another and yet another plant trees of faintly violet
light on the top of the rise, and each of them dully illumines the
whole of the horizon.
Soon there is a sparkling of brilliant stars and a sudden jungle of
fiery plumes on the hill; and a fairy mirage of blue and white hangs
lightly before our eyes in the full gulf of night.
Those among us who must devote the whole buttressed power of their
arms and legs to prevent their greasy loads from sliding off their
backs and to prevent themselves from sliding to the ground, these
neither see nor hear anything.
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