They dash up
to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and
thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the
enemy's direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a
man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and
the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the
vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the
V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252)
are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the
concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow
part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers
tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone,
mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The
tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.
In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion
shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into
immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth
on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us.
The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires
stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of
dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed
through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark
had been peeled away.
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