ive during
some of this fighting has been beyond praise. The attack went through
up to time. The supports had to come in parties organised in the dark on
the spur of the moment. The Germans had several machine-guns going. But
as another German officer told me, "This time they came on too thick. We
might have held them in front, but they got in on one side of us; then
we heard they were in on the other; then they came from the rear as
well--on all four sides. What could we do?"

Almost immediately after the Australians reached the trenches, watchers
far behind could see the horizon beyond them lit by five slow
illuminations, about ten minutes' interval between each. They were
beyond the crest of the hill. I do not know, but I think the German must
have been blowing up his field-gun ammunition.

The men in the new trenches may, or may not, have seen this. What they
did notice, as soon as the battle cleared and they had time to look into
the darkness in front of them, was a succession of brilliant glares from
some position just hidden by the slope of the hill. It was the flash of
the German guns which were firing at them. It is, as far as I know, the
first time in this battle that our men have seen the actual flash of
the enemy's guns.

When day broke they found beyond them a wide, flat stretch of hill-top,
with a distant hill line beyond. Far down the slope there were Germans
moving. And in the distant landscape they saw the German gun teams
limber up and hurry away with the field guns which for a fortnight had
been firing upon our men.

The Germans have twice afterwards attacked that position. In the early
light of the first morning a party of them came tumbling up from some
trench against a sector of the captured line. In front of them was an
officer, well ahead, firing his automatic pistol as he went, levelling
it first at one Australian, then at another, as he saw them in the
trenches before him. He was shot, and the attack quickly melted; it
never seemed very serious. Two days later, after a long, heavy
bombardment, the Germans attacked again--this time about fifteen hundred
of them. They penetrated the two trenches at one point, but our company
officers, again acting on their own initiative, charged them straight,
on the instant, without hesitation. Every German in that section was
captured, and a few Australians, whom they had taken, were released.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE GREEN COUNTRY

_France, August 2