And all this while a great force gathered at our rear—­gathered and grew—­Indian and British infantry.  Guns by the fifty were brought forward under cover of the night and placed in line behind us.  Ranjoor Singh continued talking with the enemy, lying belly downward in the mud, and they kept throwing printed stuff to us that we turned in to our officers.  But the Germans did not attack.  And the force behind us grew.

Then one evening, just after dusk, we were all amazed by the news that the assault was to come from our side.  And almost before that news had reached us the guns at our rear began their overture, making preparation beyond the compass of a man’s mind to grasp or convey.  They hurled such a torrent of shells that the Germans could neither move away the troops in front of us nor bring up others to their aid.  It did not seem possible that one German could be left alive, and I even felt jealous because, thought I, no work would be left for us to do!  Yet men did live—­as we discovered.  For a night and a day our ordnance kept up that preparation, and then word went around.

Who shall tell of a night attack, from a trench against trenches?  Suddenly the guns ceased pounding the earth in front of us and lifted to make a screen of fire almost a mile beyond.  There was instant pitch darkness on every hand, and out of that a hundred trumpets sounded.  Instantly, each squadron leader leaped the earthwork, shouting to his men.  Ranjoor Singh leaped up in front of us, and we followed him, all forgetting their distrust of him in the fierce excitement—­remembering only how he had led us in the charge on that first night.  The air was thick with din, and fumes, and flying metal—­for the Germans were not forgetting to use artillery.  I ceased to think of anything but going forward.  Who shall describe it?

Once in Bombay I heard a Christian preacher tell of the Judgment Day to come, when graves shall give up their dead.  That is not our Sikh idea of judgment, but his words brought before my mind a picture riot so much unlike a night attack in Flanders.  He spoke of the whole earth trembling and consumed by fire—­of thunder and lightning and a great long trumpet call—­of the dead leaping alive again from the graves where they lay buried.  Not a poor picture, sahib, of a night attack in Flanders!

The first line of German trenches, and the second had been pounded out of being by our guns.  The barbed wire had been cut into fragments by our shrapnel.  Here and there an arm or a leg protruded from the ground—­here and there a head.  For two hundred yards and perhaps more there was nothing to oppose us, except the enemy shells bursting so constantly that we seemed to breathe splintered metal.  Yet very few were hit.  The din was so great that it seemed to be silence.  We were phantom men, going forward without sound of footfall.  I could neither feel nor think for the first two hundred yards, but ran with my bayonet out in front of me.  And then I did feel.  A German bayonet barked my knuckles.  After that there was fighting such as I hope never to know again.