It was like watching those chariot races in a theater where the horses
gallop on a stage revolving under their feet, and for all their fury of
motion always remain in the same place. So it was with the German
line--it was pressing furiously forward, but always appeared to remain
stationary or to advance so slowly that it gave no impression of
advancing, but merely of growing bigger. Once, or perhaps twice, the
advancing line disappeared altogether, melted away behind the drifting
smoke, leaving only the mass of dark blotches sprawled on the grass. At
these times the fire died away along a part of our front, and the men
paused to gulp a drink from a water-bottle, to look round and tilt
their caps back and wipe the sweat from their brows, to gasp joyful
remarks to one another about "gettin' a bit of our own back," and "this
pays for the ninth o' May," and then listen to the full, deep roar of
rifle-fire that rolled out from further down the line, and try to peer
through the shifting smoke to see how "the lot next door" was faring.
But these respites were short. A call and a crackle of fire at their
elbows brought them back to business, to the grim business of
purposeful and methodical killing, of wiping out that moving wall that
was coming steadily at them again through the smoke and flame of the
bursting shells.
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