On going over the top for the first time at the Battle of Messines, June 1917.

Transcript: I think that if anything it was rather worse than, you know... it was terrific, the noise and the explosions. There were aero-shells going over and exploding on the enemy front line and some going further over and exploding on the support lines. There was a certain amount of German retaliatory fire until our troops advanced so that they had to withdraw their guns further back, and there was quite a bit of machine gun and rifle fire. And quite a number of our men got wounded and some of them killed and some were even shaken off their feet by the vibration of the earth...

IWM 327/8
Reproduced by courtesy of the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive