The Germans were still determined to take the town, which they had showered with four million dollars’ worth of shells.  It would be big news:  the fall of Ypres as a prelude to the fall of Przemysl and of Lemberg in their summer campaign of 1915.  A wicked salient was produced in the British line to the south-east by the cave-in to the north.  It seems to be the lot of the P.P.s to get into salients.  On the 4th they lost twenty-eight men killed and ninety-eight wounded from a gruelling all-day shell-fire and stone-walling.  That night they got relief and were out for two days, when they were back in the front trenches again.  The 5th and the 6th were fairly quiet; that is, what the P.P.s or Mr. Thomas Atkins would call quiet.  Average mortals wouldn’t.  They would try to appear unconcerned and say they had been under pretty heavy fire, which means shells all over the place and machine-guns combing the parapet.  Very dull, indeed.  Only three men killed and seventeen wounded.

On the night of May 7th the P.P.s had a muster of six hundred and thirty-five men.  This was a good deal less than half of the original total in the battalion, including recruits who had come out to fill the gaps caused by death, wounds, and sickness.  Bear in mind that before this war a force was supposed to prepare for retreat with a loss of ten per cent, and get under way to the rear with the loss of fifteen per cent, and that with the loss of thirty per cent, it was supposed to have borne all that can be expected of the best trained soldiers.

The Germans were quiet that night, suggestively quiet.  At 4.30 a.m. the prelude began; by 5.30 the German gunners had fairly warmed to their work.  They were using every kind of shell they had in the locker.  Every signal wire the P.P.s possessed had been cut.  The brigade commander could not know what was happening to them and they could not know his wishes; except that it may be taken for granted that the orders of any British brigade commander are always to “stick it.”  The shell-fire was as thick at the P.P.s’ backs as in front of them; they were fenced in by it.  And they were infantry taking what the guns gave in order to put them out of business so that the way would be clear for the German infantry to charge.  In theory they ought to have been buried and mangled beyond the power of resistance by what is called “the artillery preparation for the infantry in attack.”

Every man of the P.P.s knew what was coming.  There was relief in their hearts when they saw the Germans break from their trenches and start down the slope of the hill in front.  Now they could take it out of the German infantry in payment for what the German guns were doing to them.  This was their only thought.  Being good shots, with the instinct of the man who is used to shooting at game, the P.P.s “shoot to kill” and at individual targets.  The light green of the German uniform is more visible on the deep green background of spring