The living were in a worse state than the dead, dazed by the shellfire, and cold with terror when our men sprang upon them in the darkness before dawn. Small parties were collected and passed back as prisoners⁠—marvelously lucky men if they kept their sanity as well as their lives after all that hell about them. Hours later, when our battalions had stormed their way up other trenches into a salient jutting out of the German line and beyond the boundary of the objective that had been given to them, other living men were found to be still hiding in the depths of other dugouts and could not be induced to come out. Terror kept them in those holes, and they were like wild beasts at bay, still dangerous because they had their bombs and rifles. An ultimatum was shouted down to them by men too busy for persuasive talk. “If you don’t come out you’ll be blown in.” Some of them came out and others were blown to bits. After that the usual thing happened, the thing that inevitably happened in all these little murderous attacks and counterattacks. The enemy concentrated all its power of artillery on that position captured by our men, and day after day hurled over storms of shrapnel and high explosives, under which our men cowered until many were killed and more wounded.