first day of war and he was mortally wounded before the noon of it.
The trench filled as the day went on, with details dropping in by devious and hurried roads to meet the continual stream of prisoners being handed down to Brigade Headquarters. One youth, who could not have been seventeen, flung himself into the arms of an officer and cried, "Kamerad, Herr Offizier! Ich bin sehr jung! Kamerad!" To whom the embarrassed Islander said brutally: "Get on with you. I wouldn't touch you for the world!" And they laughed all along the trench-face as they dodged the whizz-bangs out of Orival Wood, and compared themselves to the "wurrums begging for mercy."
About noon, after many adventures, the 2nd Grenadiers arrived to carry on the advance, and Silver Street became a congested metropolis. The 2nd Grenadiers were hung up there for a while because, though the Third Division on the right had taken Flesquières, the Sixty-third on the left had not got Graincourt village, which was enfilading the landscape damnably. Orival Wood, too, was untaken, and the 1st Grenadiers, under Lord Gort, were out unsupported half a mile ahead on the right front somewhere near Premy Chapel. Meantime, a battalion of the Second Division, which was to come through the Guards Division and continue the advance, flooded up Silver Street, zealously unreeling its telephone wires; Machine-Gun Guards were there, looking for positions; the 2nd Grenadiers were standing ready; the Welsh Guards were also there with intent to support the Grenadiers; walking wounded were coming down, and severe cases were being carried over the top by German prisoners who made no secret of an acute desire to live and jumped in among the rest without leave asked. The men compared the crush to a sugar-queue at home. To cap everything, some wandering tanks which had belonged to the Division on the right had strayed over to the left. No German battery can resist tanks, however disabled;
