Tommy Atkins at War: As Told in His Own Letters

they say, must now be fought with the combatants miles apart. Bayonets are as obsolete as spears and battle axes. Evidently this theor

, of artillery, the Germans have failed to keep the Allies at the theoretical safe distance. They have been forced to accept hand-to-hand fighting, and in every encounter at close quarters there has never been a moment's doubt as to the result. They have shriveled up in th

the bugle sounds the charge, and the wild dash at the enemy's lines has begun, with the skirl of the pipes to stir up the blood, the nerves stiffen and the hands grip the rifle with grim determination. "It was his life or mine," said a young Highlander describing his first battle, "and I ran the bayonet through him." There

coil from them. "If you go near them with the bayonet they squeal like pigs," "they beg for mercy on their knees," "the

they came. I was well entrenched, and my rifle got so hot I could hardly hold it. I was wondering if I should have enough bullets, when a pal shouted, 'Up Guards and at 'em.' The next second he was rolled over with a nasty knock on the shoulder. When we really di

to arms. As the heavy German guns began to thunder and the searchlights to play on our position we gathered that a whole Army corps was about to be engaged and, falling back upon the camp, we found our men ready. No sooner had we reached the trenches than there rose out of the darkness in front of us a long line of white faces. The Germans were upon us. 'Fire!' came the order, and we sent a volley into them. They wavered, and dark patches in their ranks showed that part of the white line had been blotted out. But on they came again, the gaps filled up from behind. At a hundred yards' range, the first line drop

bayonet. "We were being knocked over in dozens by the artillery and couldn't get our own back," he writes,[C] "and I can tell you we were like a lot of schoolboys at a treat when we got the order to fix bayonets, for we knew we should fix them then. We had about 200 yards to cover before we got near them, and then we let them have it in the neck. It put us in

ergeant relates, "but we got them everywhere, not a single man getting through. About 200 of us drove them down one street, and didn't the devils squeal. We came upon a mass of them in the main thoroughfare, but they s

proved a deciding, if not indeed the decisive, factor in the campaign. Once it has been stained in service he fondles it as, next to his pipe, his be