e of the sap, and
hurriedly contemplate the scene. Five men, a sergeant and myself, wet
through and muddy all over; no sleep, little to eat, silently digging
and filling sandbags with an ever-watchful eye for the breaking of the
dawn.

Light was breaking across the sky before the job was done, and we had
still to complete the top guard of our emplacement. Then we had some
fireworks. The nervy Boches had spotted our sap as something new, and
their bullets, whacking up against our newly-thrown-up parapet, made us
glad we had worked so busily.

We were bound to complete that emplacement, so, at convenient intervals,
we crept to the opening, and after saying "one, two, three!" suddenly
plumped a newly-filled sandbag on the top. Each time we did this half a
dozen bullets went zipping through the canvas or just past overhead.
This operation had to be done about a dozen times.

A warm job! At last it was finished, and we sank down into the bottom of
the sap to rest. The time for the artillery bombardment had been fixed
to begin at about 6 a.m., if I remember rightly, so we got a little rest
between finishing our work and the attack itself.

Of course the whole of this enterprise, as far as the bombardment and
attack were concerned, cannot be compared with the magnitude of a
similar performance in 1915. All the same, it was pretty bad, but not
anything like so accurately calculated, or so mechanically efficient as
our later efforts in this line. The precise time-table methods of the
present period did not exist then, but the main idea of giving the
Opposition as much heavy lyddite, followed by shrapnel, was the same.

At about half-past six, as we sat in the sap, we heard the first shell
go over. I went to the end of the traverse alongside the emplacement,
and watched the German trenches. We were ready to fire at any of the
enemy we could see, and when the actual attack started, at the end of
the bombardment, we were going to keep up a perpetual sprinkling of
bullets along their reserve trenches. A few isolated houses stood just
in line with the German trenches. Our gunners had focussed on these,
and they gave them a good pasting.

"Crumph! bang! bang! crumph!"--hard at it all the time, whilst shrapnel
burst and whizzed about all along the German parapet. The view in front
soon became a sort of haze of black dust, as "heavy" after "heavy" burst
on top of the Boche positions. Columns of earth and black smoke shot up
like