IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH.

Beaumont-Hamel, 15th November.

That two-hour tramp through a few kilometres of trenches was a heart-breaking business. We floundered through holes, we were swallowed up in bogs, while the mud that fell from the parapets gradually spread itself over our oilskins. A steel helmet becomes wonderfully heavy after an hour or so, and a dizzy headache soon tormented us, from the constant right-angled turns which we were obliged to make, like so many slaves at a cornmill. But what a reward has been ours since our arrival!

Here we are, seated at the horizontal loophole of a quite new observation post, in the front line, in the very trench from which, the day before yesterday, the English launched their attack.

In front, towards the left, is Beaumont-Hamel. Out of this heap of rubbish start up three-cornered bits of wall, which give to these ruins the look of a dwarf village. On the hillside a mangled copse looks like those guileless charcoal strokes which one sees in a child's drawing. To the right—Beaucourt. Here the ruin is absolute. I have hunted in vain for any trace of man's handiwork. Even the dust of the stones has blown away.

A few hundred yards ahead of us the men have just rushed forward. With rifles held high they spring from the parapet into the open. They look like an army of ants, that now moves along in a stream, now closes together like a vice, now marks time, now plunges into vast funnels, and again, at racing speed, surges up the gentle slope. The barbed-wire entanglements cover acres of ground; they are the eleventh line of the German defences. In many places the wires are so closely bunched together that the balls cannot pass through them.

At least a brigade is engaged. One can see the company leaders quite plainly. The shells are bursting everywhere, throwing up furious fountains of black smoke with which bits of earth and iron are mingled. The rolling clouds of the shrapnel seem to frame one regiment.

Ah! Bad luck! That one was well timed which burst over there on the right, just above the company that was lying down there. The damage must have been serious. Men lie on the ground who will never pick themselves up again. A cloud, the colour of absinthe, hangs sullenly over those little khaki spots.

On the right, on the left, in front, behind, with a disquieting skill and precision, the Germans pile barrage upon barrage. Meanwhile, without a pause, the troops advance across this hell. I can follow, with the naked eye, every movement of an active young officer, who is wearing a light yellow overcoat, and who is charging at the head of his company, with a cane under his left arm and a revolver in his right hand as calmly as if he were strolling along Regent Street or Piccadilly.

The human wave, breaking through the barrage, disappears suddenly in the earth. It is as if a chasm had opened to swallow all these men at a gulp. And now, listen! For the gunfire is punctuated with sharp detonations. It sounds like a shrill drumming, swelled by furious shouts and cries of agony. The Tommies have entered the enemy's lines. After a short period of bombing, they advance, yard by yard, with the bayonet. Round the blockhouses the machine-guns rattle. We listen anxiously to these thousand voices of the attack. Every man has vanished. The field of vision is empty. Only the variegated smokes of the different shells spread themselves slowly abroad. The uncertainty is unbearable. Half an hour later we learn from the telephone that the attack has succeeded. The brigade has done its work. We have just witnessed, on the north bank of the Ancre, the capture of an important trench, or rather redoubt, nearly 450 yards away from Beaumont—the Munich Trench.

Here again there has been a famous haul of prisoners. More than 300 unwounded soldiers have been compelled to surrender. In a short time the first of them cross in front of our observation post. They are haggard, covered with mud, and their eyes are the eyes of trapped beasts. Two of them, converted into impromptu stretcher-bearers, are carrying a wounded officer on a stretcher that is soaked in blood.

And now the battle increases everywhere in violence. We hear that on this side of Beaucourt some strong reserves, collected there by the Germans, have just been surrounded and taken prisoners. A whole brigade staff has fallen into the hands of the English. More than 5,000 prisoners have been counted already. It will take at least two days to count all that have been taken. A genuine victory!

The "tanks" have played an honourable part in the battle, and I have just seen two of them at work. My impressions may be summed up in these words: a huge amazement and satisfaction.

One of them, which has been christened The Devil's Delight, did marvels at Beaucourt. This deliberate leviathan, having placed itself boldly at the head of the advancing flood of men, took up its position at the entrance of the ruined village. At first the Germans fled. Then, one by one, they came back. With machine-guns, bombs, rifles and mortars they endeavoured to pierce its double shell. Nothing availed. Squatted on its tail, the terrific tank lorded it there like a king on his horse. It made no objection whatever to being approached. Some sappers tried to place bombs under it, to blow it sky high. Inside it the crew shammed dead. The Germans took heart. Ten, twenty, thirty men, armed with screw-jacks and mallets laboured to overthrow it. But what could even two battalions have accomplished against this patient mastodon, whose skin was steel and whose weight was 800 tons? A colonel, mad with rage, fired the eight barrels of his revolver at it, point-blank. If the tank could have laughed it must have burst with delight. Its sense of humour is a strictly warlike one.

After a full quarter of an hour of silence the Germans, believing that the crew had been destroyed and that the monster was helpless, surrounded it boldly and in considerable numbers. Thereupon, unmasking its machine-guns, and opening fire from its sides, the terrible creature began to hack them in bits, mow them down in heaps, drill them full of holes and slay them by the dozen.

A giant miller, grinding death!

An hour later, when the larger part of the English troops succeeded in reaching Beaucourt, they found the Germans, dead and dying, piled around the tank. The tank says little, but to the point.

Three cheers for Mademoiselle Devil's Delight!