Although some of them had become harmless torches and others lay charred to death, the trench was not abandoned until the second line were ready to make a counter-attack, which they did with fixed bayonets, frenzied by the shrieks which still came from the burning pit where those comrades lay, and flinging themselves with the ferocity of wild beasts upon the enemy, who fled after leaving three hundred dead and wounded on the ground.

13

Along five hundred miles of front such scenes took place week after week, month after month, from Artois to the Argonne, not always with inflammatory liquid, but with hand grenades, bombs, stink-shells, fire balls, smoke balls, and a storm of shrapnel.  The deadly monotony of the life in wet trenches, where men crouched in mud, cold, often hungry, in the abyss of misery, unable to put their heads above ground for a single second without risk of instant death, was broken only by the attacks and counter-attacks when the order was given to leave the trench and make one of those wild rushes for a hundred yards or so in which the risks of death were at heavy odds against the chances of life.  Let a French soldier describe the scene: 

“Two sections of infantry have crouched since morning on the edge of a wood, waiting for the order which hurls them to the assault of that stupid and formidable position which is made up of barbed wire in front of the advanced trenches.  Since midday the guns thunder without cessation, sweeping the ground.  The Germans answer with great smashing blows, and it is the artillery duel which precedes heroic work.  Every one knows that when the guns are silent the brief order which will ring out above the huddled men will hold their promise of death.  Yet those men talk quietly, and there are some of them who in this time of danger find some poignant satisfaction, softening their anguish, in calling up the memory of those dear beings whom perhaps they will never see again.  With my own ears I have heard a great fair-headed lad expatiate to all his neighbours on the pretty ways of his little daughter who is eight years old.  A kind of dry twittering interrupts his discourse.  The field telegraph, fixed up in a tree, has called the lieutenant.  At the same moment the artillery fired a few single shots and then was silent.  The officer drew his watch, let ten minutes pass, and then said, ‘Get up,’ in the same tranquil and commonplace tones with which a corporal says ‘attention’ on parade ground.  It was the order to go forward.  Every one understood and rose up, except five men whom a nervous agony chained to their ground.  They had been demoralized by their long wait and weakened by their yearnings for the abandoned homes, and were in the grip of fear.  The lieutenant—­a reservist who had a little white in his beard—­ looked at the five defaulters without anger.  Then he drew, not his sword from its scabbard, but a cigarette from its case, lighted it, and said simply: