Out of narrow, crooked side avenues soldiers poured into the communication trench which the wire carriers were following, falling in ahead of them.
"We'll get into the road after the boys go over and then you'll have more room for your machine.

Close quarters, hey ?" Tom's nearest companion said.
When they reached the second-line trench the boys were leaving it, by hundreds as it seemed to Tom, and crowding through the crooked communication trenches.

The wire carriers followed on, holding up the wire at intervals.

Once when Tom peeped over the edge of the communication trench he saw the tanks waddling along to right and left, rearing up and bowing as they crossed the trench, like clumsy, trained hippopotamuses.

And all the while the artillery was booming with continuous, deafening roar.
Tom did not see the first of the boys to go over the top for they were over by the time he reached the second-line trench, but as he passed along the fire trench toward the road he could see them crowding over, and when he reached the road the barbed wire entanglements lay flat in many places, the boys picking their way across the fallen meshes, the clumsy tanks waddling on ahead, across No Man's Land.