Contrariwise, I could see how shells from the enemy crossed those shells
in the air and curved downward to scatter their iron sprays among the
Germans. In the midst of all this would come a sharp, spattering sound,
as though hail in the height of the thunder shower had fallen on a tin
roof; and that, I learned, meant infantry firing in a trench somewhere.
For a while I watched some German soldiers moving forward through a
criss-cross of trenches; I took them to be fresh men going in to relieve
other men who had seen a period of service under fire. At first they
suggested moles crawling through plow furrows; then, as they progressed
onward, they shrank to the smallness of gray grub-worms, advancing one
behind another. My eye strayed beyond them a fair distance and fell on
a row of tiny scarlet dots, like cochineal bugs, showing minutely but
clearly against the green-yellow face of a ridgy field well inside the
forward batteries of the French and English. At that same instant the
lieutenant must have seen the crawling red line too.
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