been pushed forward on
either side of us.

At daybreak we learned that we were slightly to the left of Hill 70.
Hulluch, a small village still in possession of the Germans, was to our
left front. Midway between Hill 70 and Hulluch and immediately to the
front of our position, there was a long stretch of open country which
sloped gently forward for six or eight hundred yards, and then rose
gradually toward the sky-line. In the first assault the British troops
had pushed on past the trenches we were holding and had advanced up the
opposite slope, nearly a mile farther on. There they started to dig
themselves in, but an unfortunate delay in getting forward had given the
enemy time to collect a strong force of local reserves behind his second
line, which was several hundred yards beyond. So heavy a fire had been
concentrated upon them that the British troops had been forced to retire
to the line we were then occupying. They had met with heavy losses both
in advancing and retiring, and the ground in front of us for nearly a
mile was strewn with bodies. We did not learn all of this at once. We
knew nothing of our exact position during the first night, but as there
appeared to be no enemy within striking distance of our immediate front,
we stood on the firing-benches vainly trying to get our bearings. About
one o'clock, we witnessed the fascinating spectacle of a counter-attack
at night.

It came with the dramatic suddenness, the striking spectacular display,
of a motion-picture battle. The pictorial effect seemed extravagantly
overdrawn.

There was a sudden hurricane of rifle and machine-gun fire, and in an
instant all the desolate landscape was revealed under the light of
innumerable trench rockets. We saw the enemy advancing in irregular lines
to the attack. They were exposed to a pitiless infantry fire. I could
follow the curve of our trenches on the left by the almost solid sheet of
flame issuing from the rifles of our comrades against whom the assault
was launched. The artillery ranged upon the advancing lines at once, and
the air was filled with the roar of bursting shells and the melancholy
_whing-g-g-g_ of flying shrapnel.

I did not believe that any one could cross that fire-swept area alive,
but before many moments we heard the staccato of bursting bombs and hand
grenades which meant that some of the enemy, at least, were within
striking distance. There was a sharp crescendo of deafening sound, then,
gradually