But the smoke of all the bursting shells rolled up in a thick veil, hiding those mining lads who stared toward the illuminations above the black vapors and at the flashes which seemed to stab great rents in the pall of smoke. “It was a jumpy moment,” said the colonel of the Durhams, and the moment lengthened into minutes.

Then the time came. The watch hands pointed to the second which had been given for the assault to begin, and instantly, to the tick, the guns lifted and made a curtain of fire round the Château of Hooge, beyond the Menin road, six hundred yards away.

“Time!”

The company officers blew their whistles, and there was a sudden clatter from trench-spades slung to rifle-barrels, and from men girdled with hand-grenades, as the advancing companies deployed and made their first rush forward. The ground had been churned up by our shells, and the trenches had been battered into shapelessness, strewn with broken wire and heaps of loose stones and fragments of steel.