minor Staff work of the Army, from the
battalion upward. The skill, precision and personal bravery required
from the officers concerned are not as much realised, I think, as they
ought to be by the public at home. An officer engaged as a
Brigade-Major in the fight on the Ancre, September, 1917, has written
me a detailed account of four days' experience in that battle,
involving the relief of one brigade by another, and a successful but
difficult attack, which gives a vivid idea of Staff work as carried on
in the actual fighting line itself. We see, first, the night journey
of the four infantry battalions and their machine-gun company and
trench-mortar battery, from Albert to Pozieres by motor-bus, then the
four-mile march of the troops in darkness and rain along a duck-board
track, to the trenches they were to relieve. The Brigade-Major
describes the elaborate preparation needed for every movement of the
relief and the attack, and the anxiety in the Brigade Headquarters, a
dug-out twenty feet below the ground, when the telephone--which is
constantly cut by shell fire--fails to announce the arrival of each
company at its appointed place. Presently, the left company of the
battalion on the left is missing. In the darkness, and the congestion
of men moving up to and back from the trenches on the narrow track,
clearly something has gone wrong. The Brigade-Major sets out to
discover the why and wherefore. The attack is to start at 6 A.M., and
from 9 P.M. till nearly 5 A.M.--that is, _for close on eight hours_,
the Brigade-Major is up and down the track, inquiring into the causes
of delay--(a trench, for instance, has been blown in at one point, and
the men forced into the mud beside it)--watching and helping the
assembly of the troops, and "hunting" for the company which has not
arrived, and is "apparently lost." About five he returns to his
brigade, hoping for the best.

Then, half an hour before the moment appointed for the advance, "we
heard a bombardment starting. The enemy had either discovered the hour
of our attack, or were about to attack us." The Brigadier and his
Brigade-Major anxiously go up to the top of their dug-out to survey
the field. It is clear that the British line is being heavily
attacked. Messages begin to arrive from the battalion commander on the
left to say that all communication with his companies has now been
cut. The commander on the right also rings up to report heavy
casualties. Then the teleph