“ If there’s any bloomin’ Germans left on that ground,” said Pug cheerfully, “I’d like to know ’ow they do it. Seems to me a perishin’ black-beetle in a ’ole could not ’ave come through that shell fire if ’e ’ad as many lives as a cat.”
It almost looked as if he was right, and that the defense had been obliterated by the artillery preparation, for when the order came along and the British Infantry began to scramble hurriedly over the parapet, to make their way out through the wire, and to form up quickly and roughly on the open ground beyond it, hardly a shot was fired at them, and there was no sound or sign of life in the German trenches except the whirling smoke clouds starred with quick flashes of fire from the shells that still streamed overhead and battered and hammered down on the
