No one even glanced in the direction. Every man fixed his bayonet.
The man on the extreme left had fixed his, the "Click" had warned his
comrades eight paces away, and the ominous sound, ominous for Hans and
Fritz, "Click, click, click!" ran along the lines.
The advance had started. In front were our officers, every one of them from
junior to senior, well ahead of their men. A wave of the hand, a quarter
right turn, one long blast of the whistle and we were off. We made mad
rushes of fifty or sixty yards at a time, then down we would go. No place
to seek cover, only to hug Mother Earth.
Our lads were falling pretty fast; our officers even faster. To my left
Slim Johnstone got his; ahead of me I saw Billy King go down. I heard some
one yell out that Lieutenant Smith had dropped. In the next platoon
Lieutenant Kirkpatrick fell dead. A gallant lad, this; he fell leading his
men and with a word of cheer on his lips.
We were about two hundred yards from the enemy's trench and my estimation
is that easily one-third of our fighting men were gone. Easily eighty per
cent. of our officers were out of the immediate game.
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