At the first dawn the guns opened and the shells began to burst among them.

It was a horrible ordeal for raw troops.

The men were miners and agricultural labourers, who had never seen more bloodshed than a cut finger in their lives.

They had been four months in the country, but their life had been a picnic, as the luxury of their baggage shows.

Now in an instant the picnic was ended, and in the grey cold dawn war was upon them--grim war with the whine of bullets, the screams of pain, the crash of shell, the horrible rending and riving of body and limb.