, red glow ahead. This
turned out to be Wieltj. All that was left of it, a smouldering ruin.
Here and there the bodies of dead men lay about the road. At intervals I
could discern the stiffened shapes of corpses in the ditches which
bordered the road. We went through Wieltj without stopping. Passing out
at the other side we proceeded up this awful, shell-torn road, towards a
slight hill, at the base of which we stopped. Now came my final orders.
"Come on at once, follow up the battalion, who, with the brigade, are
about to attack."

"Now we're for it," I said to myself, and gave the order to unlimber the
guns. One limber had been held up some little way back I found, by
getting jammed in a shell-hole in the road. I couldn't wait for it to
come up, so sent my sergeant back with some men to get hold of the guns
and tackle in it, and follow on as soon as they could. I got out the
rest of the things that were there with us and prepared to start on
after the battalion. "I'll go to the left, and you'd better go to the
right," I shouted to my sergeant. "Here, Smith, let's have your rifle,"
I said, turning to my servant. I had decided that he had best stay and
look after the limbers. I seized his rifle, and slipping on a couple of
bandoliers of cartridges, led on up the slight hill, followed by my
section carrying the machine guns. I felt that a rifle was going to be
of more use to me in this business than a revolver, and, anyway, it was
just as well to have both.

It was now just about four o'clock in the morning. A faint light was
creeping into the sky. The rain was abating a bit, thank goodness!

We topped the rise, and rushed on down the road as fast as was possible
under the circumstances. Now we were in it! Bullets were flying through
the air in all directions. Ahead, in the semi-darkness, I could just see
the forms of men running out into the fields on either side of the road
in extended order, and beyond them a continuous heavy crackling of
rifle-fire showed me the main direction of the attack. A few men had
gone down already, and no wonder--the air was thick with bullets. The
machine-gun officer of one of the other regiments in the brigade was
shot right through the head as he went over the brow of the hill. I
found one of his machine-gun sections a short time later, and
appropriated them for our own use. After we had gone down the road for
about two hundred yards I thought that my best plan was to get away over
to