II

The movements of troops and the preparations for big events revealed to every British soldier in France the “secret” of the coming battle. Casualty clearing-stations were ordered to make ready for big numbers of wounded. That was always one of the first signs of approaching massacre. Vast quantities of shells were being brought up to the railheads and stacked in the “dumps.” They were the first-fruit of the speeding up of munition-factories at home after the public outcry against shell shortage and the lack of high explosives. Well, at last the guns would not be starved. There was enough high-explosive force available to blast the German trenches off the map. So it seemed to our innocence⁠—though years afterward we knew that no bombardment would destroy all earthworks such as Germans made, and that always machine-guns would slash our infantry advancing over the chaos of mangled ground.