[Illustration:  Charging on German trenches in gas masks

Each British soldier carried two gas-proof helmets.  At the first alarm of gas the helmet was instantly adjusted, for breathing even a whiff of the yellow cloud meant death or serious injury.  This picture shows the earlier type before the respirator mask was devised to keep up with Germany’s development of gas warfare.]

“The village was a sight that the men say they will never forget.  It looked as if an earthquake had struck it.  The published photographs do not give any idea of the indescribable mass of ruins to which our guns reduced it.  The chaos is so utter that the very line of the streets is all but obliterated.

“It was indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle Brigade—­the first regiment to enter the village, I believe—­raced headlong.  Of the church only the bare shell remained, the interior lost to view beneath a gigantic mound of debris.  The little churchyard was devastated, the very dead plucked from their graves, broken coffins and ancient bones scattered about amid the fresher dead, the slain of that morning—­gray-green forms asprawl athwart the tombs.  Of all that once fair village but two things remained intact—­two great crucifixes reared aloft, one in the churchyard, the other over against the chateau.  From the cross, that is the emblem of our faith, the figure of Christ, yet intact though all pitted with bullet marks, looked down in mute agony on the slain in the village.

“The din and confusion were indescribable.  Through the thick pall of shell smoke Germans were seen on all sides, some emerging half dazed from cellars and dugouts, their hands above their heads, others dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned tombstones.  Machine guns were firing from the houses on the outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above the noise of the rifles.

“Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous enthusiasm.  The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in with the Third Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India.  The little brown men were dirty but radiant.  Kukri in hand they had very thoroughly gone through some houses at the cross-roads on the Rue du Bois and silenced a party of Germans who were making themselves a nuisance there with some machine guns.  Riflemen and Gurkhas cheered themselves hoarse.”

Unfortunately for the complete success of the brilliant attack a great delay was caused by the failure of the artillery that was to have cleared the barbed wire entanglements for the Twenty-third Brigade, and because of the unlooked for destruction of the British field telephone system by shell and rifle fire.  The check of the Twenty-third Brigade banked other commands back of it, and the Twenty-fifth Brigade was obliged to fight at right angles to the line of battle.  The Germans quickly rallied at these points, and took a terrific toll in British lives.  Particularly was this true at three specially strong German positions.  One called Port Arthur by the British, another at Pietre Mill and the third was the fortified bridge over Des Layes Creek.