I looked left and right. The moment before the engagement was an unforgettable picture. In shell craters against the enemy line, which was still being forked over and over by the fire-storm, lay the battalions of attackers, clumped together by company. At the sight of the dammed-up masses of men, the breakthrough appeared certain to me. But did we have the strength and the stamina to splinter also the enemy reserves and rend them apart? I was confident. The decisive battle, the last charge, was here. Here the fates of nations would be decided, what was at stake was the future of the world. I sensed the weight of the hour, and I think everyone felt the individual in them dissolve, and fear depart.

The mood was curious, brimming with tension and a kind of exaltation. Officers stood up and exchanged banter. I saw Solemacher standing there in a long coat in the midst of his little staff, a short pipe with a green bowl in his hand, like a huntsman on a cold day, waiting for the gillies to do their work. We exchanged a fraternal wave. Often a mortar would fall short, and a shower of earth as high as a steeple would cover the waiting men, and no one would even flinch. The noise of battle had become so terrific, that no one was at all clear-headed.

Three minutes before the attack, Vinke beckoned to me with a full water-bottle. I took a long pull, as though it were indeed only water I was drinking. Now just the cigar was missing. Three times the air pressure snuffed out my match.

The great moment was at hand. The wave of fire had trundled up to the first lines. We attacked.

Our rage broke like a storm. Thousands must have fallen already. That was clear; and even though the shelling continued it felt quiet, as though it had lost its imperative thrust.

No man’s land was packed tight with attackers, advancing singly, in little groups or great masses towards the curtain of fire. They didn’t run or even take cover if the vast plume of an explosion rose between them. Ponderous, but unstoppable, they advanced on the enemy lines. It was as though nothing could hurt them any more.

It was number 7 on the list, the dreaded Penguin edition (modified F.N. Maude) with long, historically and militarily illiterate meanderings by Anatol Rapaport appended.