shouts drowning the roar of guns, and rank on rank they reeled back from British steel and swinging rifle-butt, and German shouts died and were lost in British cheers.
So, day after day, week after week, month after month they endured still; swept by rifle and machine-gun fire, blown up by mines, buried alive by mortar bombs, their very trenches smitten flat by high explosives — yet they endured and held on. They died all day and every day, but their places were filled by men just as fiercely determined. And ever as the countless German batteries fell silent, their troops in dense grey waves hurled themselves upon shattered British trench and dug-out, and found there wild men in tunics torn and bloody and mud-bespattered, who, shouting in fierce joy, leapt to meet them bayonet to bayonet. With clubbed rifle and darting steel they fought, these men of the Empire, heedless of wounds and death, smiting and cheering, thrusting and shouting, until those long, close-ranked columns broke, wavered and melted away.