Battalion Headquarters followed in reserve.

The staggering surprise of the British attack completely shattered the
morale of what German elements were holding the sector. They surrendered
in twenties to the oncoming tanks and rapidly advancing lines of
infantry. Hun artillery started into frenzied action by this phenomenal
development commenced to hastily lob over an erratic series of shells.

The Normans, crossing a sunken road in column, fell again into correct
formation on the higher ground, progressed a few hundred yards beyond
what had an hour before constituted the Fritz front line, and halted.
Four light shells burst around and about the reserve Company; no one
stopped anything. One piece of iron crashed into a boulder near Le
Page's foot. He sprang a yard into the air and nearly put two men out of
mess with his bayonet. In the hot argument that ensued they almost
forgot that there was a war on and that the advance was moving on
without them.

A lad with half a leg hanging and placed by two bearers on a stretcher,
rose from a lying posture as the Royal Guernseys passed.

"'Ere, Guernseys," he hailed, "I was with you at Canterbury--Buffs. Jus'
got in the way of a Blighty. Anybody got a fag?" It was supplied and the
party moved on. About to descend into the sunken road the bearers
ducked to that fatal shell whine ... too late. Three blood-soaked
figures were visible through the lifting-smoke stretched inert on the
ground.

"If only 'e 'adn't stopped," muttered several hoarsely. Life is chance!

The first great onslaught of artillery fire slackened towards mid-day,
sharper crack of rifles and wicked splutter of machine guns becoming for
the first time noticeable. Enemy shells became fewer and fewer, his
power of resistance--weak from the opening--deteriorated to little more
than a rout. The prisoners were swelling an already long roll ... nine
or ten thousand on the nine-mile front.

Ribecourt, on the Normans' front, had fallen after a brief skirmish, the
German last line of defence reached and artillery support was still far
to the rear when the Ten Hundred, passing through the Division ahead,
took upon their own shoulders the responsibility to carry the Push
through its last two miles and to force the capitulation of Nine Wood,
now plainly visible at the top of the next long incline.

They went for it, hell for leather, in a long line of skirmishers. Their
rifles cracked with the rapidity that tells the m